Space evaluation

The conversation is going to be difficult, but Jay Schools superintendent Tim Long believes it’s a conversation that’s going to have to take place.
Faced with declining enrollment, Jay School Board members have weighed the possibility of closing buildings and consolidating students for the past few years.
And Long believes it’s time to get serious about discussing the options.
“It’s a good time to talk about things now,” Long said in an interview this week. “We can’t afford to wait a couple years then say it’s time to act.”
Driving the discussion are some tough numbers:
•Jay Schools had about 6,000 students in 1974. Today it has about 3,300.
•Jay County High School was built for about 1,800 students. Today’s enrollment is about 1,100.
•Every student lost costs the school corporation about $7,000 a year in state support for the general fund.
“We cannot get away from the fact that we’re losing enrollment,” said Long. “People are moving to the bigger cities and having less children, and it’s having an effect on the schools.”
Any discussion of potentially closing schools, however, stirs strong opinions from the public.
When Jay School Board members initially floated the idea of closing Pennville Elementary School, parents and community leaders there quickly voiced opposition.
And in his State of the City address earlier this week, Dunkirk Mayor Dan Watson was unequivocal.
“We must fight to keep these facilities in Dunkirk,” Watson said of his community’s schools.

A potential consolidation plan outlined this week by Long would affect both those communities and have an impact on the entire county.
Long emphasized that he was sketching out just one vision of how the problem might be addressed.
“These are just ideas and thoughts. That’s what I’m paid to do,” said Long. “These are ideas I want to put out there for thought.”
But he added that problem isn’t going to go away and some tough decisions inevitably lie ahead.
Long outlined a consolidation plan that would:
•Close Pennville Elementary School and move those students to Redkey Elementary School. Both schools have seen sharp declines in enrollment, with Pennville dropping to just 70 students at one point this school year and Redkey’s enrollment dropping from 204 to about 160. “The economics of the situation are going to force us to look at a merger of those two schools,” said Long.
•Move all Jay County eighth graders to a segregated section of JCHS.
•Move West Jay Middle School’s sixth and seventh graders to East Jay Middle School in Portland.
•Make use of the current West Jay building as a new home for Dunkirk’s Westlawn Elementary School, and close the current Westlawn building.
Long had floated a similar plan consolidating the two middle schools a few years ago, but that concept involved building additional classroom space at East Jay. Because of the cost involved, that idea went nowhere.
Now, after studying space utilization at JCHS, Long has come to the conclusion that there are as many as 27 unused classroom spaces currently available at the high school.
“We need about 18 that we could segregate for eighth grade,” he said, envisioning a plan that would make use of much of the area in and around the current media center at the southwest corner of the building just for that grade level.
Long indicated he would ask the board Monday to have a more detailed space utilization study done.
“These are options,” said Long. But he added that enrollment decline is real. “We have to plan for that decline. … We have to put it out there for discussion. … But we do know some of these inevitables are on the horizon.”
Long said he sees a potential benefit from future consolidation.
“There’s an opportunity for the community to redefine itself,” he said. “Students would come together in grades six through twelve and be one. … It’s a statement of possible unity for Jay County, something this community has struggled with for years, unifying the county finally.”