EG Board Sets WGS Hearing Date

WILL PRESENT PLAN TO PUBLIC JUNE 8

A public hearing for residents of the East Greene school district to discuss the proposed whole grade sharing arrangement between East Greene and Jefferson-Scranton will be Wednesday, June 8, at 7:30 p.m. in the band room at the high school building in Grand Junction.

The first step in setting a hearing date was to pass a “declaration to negotiate” a whole grade sharing arrangement with Jefferson-Scranton which passed by a 5-0 vote of board members Tim Bardole, Kevin Fouch, Richard Gordon, Marc Hoffman and John Lint at the East Greene board meeting on Wednesday, May 18, at the ICN room at the high school.

Scheduling a date for the hearing was a little trickier as Bardole, a longtime board member and former president, will be on vacation during the week of the regular June board meeting, June 15, so the board was trying to reschedule a combined hearing and June board meeting but finding conflicts with the softball and baseball games on the school calendar.

The consensus among board members was they did not want to force patrons to choose between an East Greene sports activity and the public hearing. A possible Sunday night or late afternoon meeting was discussed as Bardole would be available then, but the closest Sunday to the regularly scheduled meeting date was Fathers’ Day. Overall, the preference was for a weeknight.

Tony Beger, high school activities director, joined the meeting and he was able to confirm dates for scheduled softball and baseball games.

It was agreed that Wednesday, June 8, would work as no activities are scheduled on that date. A district-wide “garage sale” is scheduled to be set up in the gym on June 8, so it was agreed to move the public hearing to the band room, which is air conditioned. Supt. Mike Harter advised Beger to not reschedule any rained out softball or baseball games for that evening.

Harter said June 8 would fit within the 10- to 20-day time frame required for getting notice of the hearing published—after voting to approved the date that night (May 18). The official legal publication could run in the Jefferson Herald, the district’s designated newspaper, on May 26 and meet the 10-day advance requirement.

Harter told the board that he and Tim Christensen, superintendent of Jefferson-Scranton, are still working on details of the sharing agreement. Both boards met jointly on April 20 in the commons area of the Jefferson-Scranton elementary school in Jefferson to review a report from Jerry McCall of Education Consulting Services on a sharing plan that would have East Greene maintain a pre-kindergarten through fourth grade building in Grand Junction and Jefferson-Scranton maintain its pre-kindergarten through fourth grades in the elementary building in Jefferson. All fifth and sixth graders of both districts would attend classes in the Grand Junction building and all seventh through 12th graders would attend classes in Jefferson.

This two-way sharing agreement then would have Jefferson sending 158 fifth and sixth grader students to East Greene, and East Greene sending sending 125 students in grades 7-12 to Jefferson-Scranton (based on 2010-11 enrollment figures).

In proceeding with the “declaration to negotiate” the board’s action included language that “due to declining enrollment and due to declining budgets” the district was proceeding with the whole grade sharing process.

The state funds most of the school districts’ budget and has included financial incentives for small districts to whole grade share. East Greene will save $72,713 in the arrangement with Jefferson-Scranton sharing $94,247.

Next school year, 2011-12, the two districts will expand a vocal music sharing to include vocal and instrumental sharing. So this was the last year for an East Greene jazz band, an activity that has brought the school many honors including a state championship and successive state jazz band contest appearances, including this year where the EG group placed 7th of the 15 finalists in Class 1A.

This is an extension of some of the academic sharing that currently exists between the two districts where high schools students from East Greene take vocational, upper level and college placement courses at Jefferson-Scranton.

Still on the table, however, is McCall’s recommendation to close the Rippey school building, which is the current East Greene elementary building that serves grades pre-kindergarten through fifth with grades 6-12 in the high school building in Grand Junction.

An earlier proposal had the elementary continuing in Rippey, the fifth and sixth graders from both districts attending classes in Grand Junction, and all the middle and high school students in Jefferson.

The public will get their opportunity to comment and ask questions of the board at the June 8 hearing, but the final decision to enter a whole grade sharing arrangement rests with the board. A district-wide vote is called for only for an overall reorganization of a school district with another school district. East participating district votes separately on such an arrangement, but both must pass the referendum for a reorganization to be approved.