The Adair – Casey and Guthrie Center School Boards met in a special work session to continue discussions on whole grade sharing/reorganization.
Superintendent Josh Rasmussen shared with the Boards that he had talked with their representation at Ahlers and Cooney about an outline of what a petition for reorganization would look like, along with speaking to the local Area Education Agency and the Department of Education on steps they could take moving forward. He mentioned that he had found out that the supplemental weighting for districts going through organization had sunset on July 1st, and that to get that subsidiary funding back it would need to be renewed this winter.
“Probably the biggest thing is just being able to have the incentive to merge or to consolidate. Right now, this legislative session, they’re going to need to extend those incentives. They expired last July, so that’s something that we will need to happen. We’ll need those incentives to consolidate. They need to be extended for us probably to move forward. But that’s something we’re definitely looking at in the future.”
As a whole, the Board members agreed that reorganization and consolidation makes sense, as the districts have been whole grade sharing since 2016. Guthrie Center School Board member Cara Underwood shares why the Boards are looking to move forward with the reorganization.
“It’s one that we think now is the right time for us to do that. We have a lot going for us with our academics, with our athletics. Many people don’t realize that we are just whole grade sharing and we were not already consolidated. So this is a great time. I think that was always the eventual plan of this, and so trying to do that at this time when it makes sense for all of us. We also have the ability to then be stronger together as one district.”
Rasmussen explained that should the Boards move forward with reorganization, it was suggested the current members of each Board appoint a new Board through the alternative Board election process. This is where the current members would vote on a five or seven person Board made up of current members. Adair – Casey School Board President Randy Carney mentions more of what the process moving forward looks like.
“As far as the board, we’ve got to decide how many board members we want to have. And then they took the incentives to whole grade share and stuff away, and we definitely need to work on getting that back into legislative. So we’re going to be reaching out to our legislators and we just need to be open with the public. We’ll have a few public meetings to get everybody on board and inform them that really nothing’s going to change that much. It’s just going to be one board of AC/GC, and not an AC board or a GC board.”
The AC and GC Boards discussed what the new Board might look like, but no decision was made at this time, as they will work to continue discussions on how to move forward. Rasmussen also mentioned that a voter-approved Physical Plant and Equipment Levy (PPEL) fund would be needed, and that the petition would need to be approved by a simple majority in each school district.