The school board has eliminated some of the ‘low-hanging fruit’ from the possible high school reconfiguration options.

At Monday’s regular board meeting, the members handled their agenda and moved into a more relaxed session in which they talked through the 15 options before them.

They ended up unanimously removing eight from consideration.

Two of the items concerned only elementary or middle level reconfigurations – something the board is not considering at this time.

The first high school option off the table was the “one-high-school” proposal.

“We can’t fit all the kids into one building that we have,” Board Member Joe Colosimo said. And, he said he didn’t see anyone on the board being interested in an $80-plus million construction project to build a new one.

Next to go were proposals for four or two magnet schools in the district.

“This was one of my hopes when I first joined the board,” Board Member Mary Passinger said. “It didn’t take long seeing the realities of what we are facing to learn that this is not an option for us.”

The board agreed that there are not enough students in the district to support having highly specialized schools.

On Superintendent Amy Stewart’s suggestion, an option to close Youngsville High School and send all of the students in the western attendance area to Eisenhower was rejected

Stewart said some of the students in that area would have significantly shorter trips to school if they were moved to Warren instead.

“The (transportation) problem areas are in the southwest,” she said. “I would be hesitant to put anything on the list that shipped those kids all the way to Eisenhower when Warren is a much closer option for them. I would like to go with something that offers a little more flexibility.”

Stewart suggested that one of the options – offering high school grades only at Warren Area High School and Eisenhower High School – was a duplication of the sum of two other options on the list.

All of the above options were originally proposed by board members or administrators when they were surveyed about possible changes.

The first cut option that came out of a public engagement session last week was to close and sell all of the district’s buildings that do not have students in them and shut down the Virtual Academy.

The district cited a utilization study in proposing reconfiguration. That study indicated that there are many unused spaces in the high schools. The closure proposal advocated moving central office administration, aintenance, storage, and servers into some of those unused spaces. Shuttering the Virtual Academy was expected to free up certificated teachers to help the district address the nation-wide teacher shortage.

The board members did not see it that way.

“I have no interest in closing central office,” Board Member Arthur Stewart said. “There’s so much benefit that we derive from the Virtual Academy.”

“The idea of eliminating the virtual school to free up teachers, I don’t see any sense in that at all,” Passinger said.

The remaining options before the board are:

¯ Sheffield 9-12 to Warren High;

¯ Youngsville 9-12 split between Warren High and Eisenhower;

¯ K-12 at Youngsville;

¯ 9-12 at Warren and Youngsville;

¯ no change;

¯ four autonomous schools with independent local school boards for each; and

¯ redistribute students – redraw the attendance boundaries.

The final option on the list was the subject of some discussion.

The proposal from the public engagement meeting intended that the lines be drawn closer to the central attendance area, increasing the number of students that would attend the other schools to help balance enrollment. Multiple board members said they were not interested. Board Member Cody Brown said he wanted to consider the possibility, but not in a way that was limited to one direction.

“I’m not focusing on Warren,” Brown said. “I was trying to look at all schools to make sense.”

Having seven options remaining is short of the target of four or five identified in previous documents, but the board was satisfied with the work.

They also established a list of criteria by which they would evaluate the options.

Those were:

¯ length of time on the bus;

¯ impacts to class size;

¯ access and impact to special education/pupil services;

¯ overall well-being of children;

¯ implementation cost;

¯ impacts on teachers – preps, effectiveness;

¯ value of schools to community;

¯ impacts on learning environment – support curriculum and make more courses/levels available; and

¯ bringing other services to community schools.

The board has stressed that the reconfiguraation is not intended to be a cost-saving move. However, the members said Monday that costs had to be considered in the deliberation.

Part of the implementation cost of any plan involving putting more students at Youngsville High School would be renovation to that building, board members said.

“If we’re going to keep that one, there’s more work to be done,” Arthur Stewart said. “We’re talking millions. I don’t know how many.”

Several community members addressed the board with concerns and suggestions about the process.

Amy Stewart said an updated version of the Frequently Asked Questions document would be posted on the district website.