February 22, 2020 at 5:17 a.m.
S. Wells busing could change
District provides transportation from the Pennville area
S. Wells busing could change
Southern Wells Community Schools may stop providing bus service to Pennville area students next fall.
Board members are weighing whether to end the busing of students from outside the district boundaries, The News Banner (Bluffton)?reported this week.
A decision is expected at the next meeting of the Southern Wells board at 5 p.m. March 10 in the Southern Wells High School media center.
Currently, Southern Wells provides bus service to students from the Montpelier, Warren and Pennville areas, though that policy has drawn complaints from adjoining school districts. It has long been a magnet for students who live on the outskirts of the Blackford and Huntington North districts, and picked up Jay County students following the closure of Pennville Elementary School.
Those students would still be able to attend Southern Wells Schools even if it discontinued busing, but parents would have to provide their own transportation.
About 40 Pennville area students opted to attend classes at Southern Wells after Pennville Elementary was closed because of declining enrollment in 2017. Those students leaving Jay Schools led to a loss of about $250,000 in per-student funding from the State of Indiana.
According to the state’s public corporation transfer report for 2020, 298 of Southern Wells’ 872 students — about 34 percent — are transfers from out of the district. Losing just half of those transfer students would cost Southern Wells about $1 million in state funding.
Southern Wells’ decision to bus students from outside of its district also led to a long dispute over the future of Area 18, a cooperative made up of Jay, South Adams, Blackford, Southern Wells, Adams Central, Bluffton-Harrison, North Adams, Northern Wells and Huntington schools that provides career and technical education for high schoolers. The other schools in the group 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.
However, after a process that lasted more than a year, Indiana State Board of Education rejected that new agreement.
Board members are weighing whether to end the busing of students from outside the district boundaries, The News Banner (Bluffton)?reported this week.
A decision is expected at the next meeting of the Southern Wells board at 5 p.m. March 10 in the Southern Wells High School media center.
Currently, Southern Wells provides bus service to students from the Montpelier, Warren and Pennville areas, though that policy has drawn complaints from adjoining school districts. It has long been a magnet for students who live on the outskirts of the Blackford and Huntington North districts, and picked up Jay County students following the closure of Pennville Elementary School.
Those students would still be able to attend Southern Wells Schools even if it discontinued busing, but parents would have to provide their own transportation.
About 40 Pennville area students opted to attend classes at Southern Wells after Pennville Elementary was closed because of declining enrollment in 2017. Those students leaving Jay Schools led to a loss of about $250,000 in per-student funding from the State of Indiana.
According to the state’s public corporation transfer report for 2020, 298 of Southern Wells’ 872 students — about 34 percent — are transfers from out of the district. Losing just half of those transfer students would cost Southern Wells about $1 million in state funding.
Southern Wells’ decision to bus students from outside of its district also led to a long dispute over the future of Area 18, a cooperative made up of Jay, South Adams, Blackford, Southern Wells, Adams Central, Bluffton-Harrison, North Adams, Northern Wells and Huntington schools that provides career and technical education for high schoolers. The other schools in the group 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.
However, after a process that lasted more than a year, Indiana State Board of Education rejected that new agreement.
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