More than the loss of Vernay Labratories, The Antioch Company and Antioch College combined; not having our own school system would surely change the nature of this village. We would become the bedroom community that many of us fear, or worse. Not possible, you say? Think again!
Our school board is acutely aware of the problems that would go with losing our own schools and has been fighting declining enrollment for decades. It is widely acknowledged that open enrollment is critically important to sustaining our schools. As it is, we are graduating less than 60 students per year. But open enrollment, assuming it is not done away with by legislation, may not be enough to save us.
Now, two think tanks, the Brookings Institution and the Greater Ohio Policy Center, are recommending to the state's leaders that school districts consolidate to reduce their numbers state-wide from 611 to around 400. Districts with less than 2500 students would be in jeopardy. Yellow Springs’ enrollment is around 700.
One of the criticisms leveled against the current system in Ohio is the disproportionate amount of spending on administration versus per-pupil spending. This recommendation comes at a time when our school board is in the process of replacing all four of its top administrators.
For more on this, listen to this report by Bill Cohen of the Statehouse News Bureau that was aired on WYSO this morning: Report suggests leaders teach Ohioans the benefit of trimming number of school districts by a third.
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3 comments:
This is why our School Board and community have to get their goals together and work as a UNIT. Minor disagreements are fine, but no FACTIONS. The closest school district is Cedarcliff; our students and their students have very little in common. It would be a tough consolidation when you think of the differences in communities. Then there is the busing, the lack of community involvement that happens when it's no longer a community school...
Agreed. If there is ever a time to pull together it's now. We moved back to Yellow Springs because of the extra attention our children get in the schools. That keeps us here even with a tight job market and limited opportunities. We're not the only ones. Lose one of the main reasons why young families move here and we'll be like a lot of other dying, small Midwestern towns.
Anonymous said:
"The closest school district is Cedarcliff; our students and their students have very little in common. It would be a tough consolidation when you think of the differences in communities."
Yes, I can see what you mean. On the one hand, you have a community which is lacking in diversity, intolerant, and with a leadership dominated by fundamentalists. On the other hand, there's Cedarville...
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