School compact remains intact

The Area 18 agreement will remain the same for now. 

The Indiana State Board of Education did not approve a new agreement for Area 18, a cooperative of nine schools that provides career and technical education for high schoolers. Area 18 is made up of Jay, South Adams, Blackford, Southern Wells, Adams Central, Bluffton-Harrison, North Adams (Bellmont), Northern Wells (Norwell) and Huntington schools. 

Area 18 has a director who helps develop career and technical education at each high school in the cooperative and administers the grant money it receives for CTE. High school students in Area 18 can take those classes at their own schools or can travel to other high schools in the agreement to attend classes part-time. Jay County High School, for instance, has about 91 percent of its students enrolled in a CTE class and typically exchanges students with South Adams for CTE education. 

In 2017, Southern Wells School Board began sending buses across school district lines to pick up students in the Jay, Blackford and Huntington school districts. According to school board minutes from a March 2017 meeting, Southern Wells could potentially earn $388,000 in state funding by accepting transfer students from these counties. 

The other schools sought a way to stop Southern Wells, and the cooperative drew up a new agreement stipulating that participating schools would not be allowed to send buses across district lines to pick up general enrollment students. 

(Field trips, CTE and other shared services would be exempted.) If a school did not follow the agreement, it would have two years to find a new cooperative to join before being removed from Area 18. 

Seven of the nine schools — Jay, South Adams, Blackford, Huntington, North Adams, Adams Central and Bluffton-Harrison — voted in September to cancel the old agreement and adopt the new agreement. Southern Wells voted against it, and Northern Wells abstained from voting. 

The matter went before the Indiana State Board of Education in November. The board heard testimony from several superintendents and principals, Southern Wells’ lawyer and a parent of students who had transferred to Southern Wells.

According to a video recording of the meeting, Steve Darnell, superintendent of Southern Wells Community Schools, said the district has about 877 students enrolled. About a third of those students are transfer students from other districts.

Southern Wells School Board vice president Todd Fiechter told the board the decision to cross district lines was primarily about student safety. Students used to be dropped off at the county lines at bus stops along busy highways, he said.  

“We made the decision to move our stops 4 to 5 miles out of our district into city parks so we’d have a safer place to pick up the kids,” Fiechter, who has since resigned, said. “If the new CTE operating agreement’s adopted, we’re going to be forced to make a decision between safe transportation of our students and jeopardizing all the other education.”  

Jennifer McCormick, who is the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, said she was frustrated by the fact that the state board had to make a decision for a problem that could be resolved internally. At the time she was chair of the board but has since stepped down. 

“You’ve got seven independent local boards fighting for the same thing,” McCormick said. “We’re making the decision for you that should lie locally.”

But other members spoke in favor of school choice and not restricting the rights of parents to choose which school their children attend. 

Ultimately, the board voted against instating the new agreement, leaving the old one in place with no changes. 

The vote was not unanimous, however. McCormick voted in favor of adopting the new agreement, as did Steve Yager. But eight other members voted against adopting the new agreement. (Board member Cari Whicker, who is principal of Southern Wells Elementary School, abstained from the matter and was not in the room during the discussion or vote.) 

Jeremy Gulley, superintendent of Jay Schools, said the board’s decision was not unexpected. 

“I don’t think anyone was surprised, necessarily,” Gulley said. “I didn’t detect people being surprised by the decision, at least in my conversations with other superintendents.” 

However, he disagreed with the ruling of the state board, saying that the Area 18 local school districts should have been able to settle the matter themselves. 

“I believe that local school boards are in the best position to assess what’s best for their students, their programs and their schools,” Gulley said.

And while there were concerns about Area 18 fracturing if the state board did not approve the new agreement, Gulley said for now he expects Jay School Corporation to remain. While Jay Schools only sends students to South Adams for vocational classes, the districts all share in the cost of administering vocational grant money Area 18 receives. 

But even if Jay Schools were to leave, Gulley said, he would expect the reciprocal relationship with South Adams to remain the same. 

“I don’t see those programs in jeopardy whatsoever,” Gulley said. 

Plus, the school district has the advantage of a partnership with John Jay Center for Learning and could increase its collaboration with the nonprofit to offer more CTE classes for students. 

But for now, Jay Schools has not decided when — or if — it will take action on the Area 18 agreement. The district has other important matters to consider, Gulley said, such as the consolidation and reconfiguring of schools planned to take place over the next few years. 

“Right now we’ve got pretty significant decisions the school has to make for the school district,” Gulley said. “(There’s) no specific timeline. We’re just considering options and trying to think outside the box by considering additional or new partnerships with John Jay Center for Learning.”