A recent proposal has been discussed to bring two school districts closer together.

Members from the Greene County and Paton-Churdan School Boards recently met in a special sub-committee meeting to discuss sharing opportunities. That’s when Greene County formally presented to Paton-Churdan an athletic and academic sharing proposal.

For the 2019-2020 school year, Greene County proposes that P-C would pay the equivalent cost of an assistant coach in each of the shared sports programs in junior high school and high school levels. The estimates were equivalent to 0.018 of the base or one unit equalling $568. Based off of 2018-19 costs, and with 20 junior high and 51 high school positions, that would be $40,391. Then in 2020-2021, Greene County proposes that all sports programs would be shared.

As for academics for the 2019-2020 school year, Greene County proposes P-C to increase its percentage of the State Cost Per Pupil from 90- to 100-percent. Then the costs for students who take Career and Technical Education courses and upper level math and science (AP calculus, physics, etc.) classes would be at a cost of 125-percent. Then in 2020-2021, Greene County proposes a one-way whole grade sharing agreement for 9th through 12th grades.

At last week’s school board meeting, all Greene County School Board members were in favor of the proposal. P-C Superintendent Kreg Lensch tells Raccoon Valley Radio the proposal was presented to the full P-C School Board last week as well. He says the Board requested that he look into the financial data to measure the impact the proposal would have on their district. No action was taken by either board.

Greene County Superintendent Tim Christensen mentioned in their board meeting last week that the current sharing agreement requires either district to notify the other if they want to make changes to the agreement by November 1st for academics and by the following February for any of the sports programs in order for the changes to take effect for the following school year.