Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Petitions including approximately 800 signatures in favor of a remonstrance against the proposed Warsaw schools project were filed Wednesday with the Kosciusko County Auditor's office.
According to Auditor Sue Ann Mitchell, more petitions are due to be filed with her office on Friday.
The planned remonstrance, said superintendent Dr. Dave McGuire, already has brought about a change in his recommendation to the school board.
McGuire said today that because of the remonstrance, he will probably recommend to the board at its next meeting that they still close the small schools next year and "move the elementaries into the existing structures."
Initial petitions begin the remonstrance process. State law specifies that at least 250 signatures of property owners within the school district must sign petitions stating that they intend to remonstrate against the school corporation's proposed building program.
Once the petitions are filed, the auditor's office has 15 days to verify that the signatures belong to property owners in the correct area.
According to Ron Yeiter, a school board member who helped organize the remonstrance, while the proposed building program includes schools in Clay, Lake, Wayne, Prairie and Plain townships, approximately half the signatures on the petitions are from residents of Wayne Township.
At the May 19 school board meeting, McGuire proposed closing the four smallest elementary schools - Atwood, Claypool, Jefferson and Silver Lake - and building two new schools - one in Prairie Township and one to replace Jefferson Elementary in Winona Lake.
In early June, he proposed a compromise: to close the four small schools, build the new Jefferson School and renovate Claypool Elementary so it could take students from Silver Lake.
The change in his position, McGuire said, is because he wants to avoid polarizing the community.
"My recommendation to the board is that we not proceed with a petition fight and not split the community," he said this morning.
He said he believes the issue could cause bitter feelings in the community, "and that's why I want to avoid that if I can."
Part of the divisiveness of a remonstrance is that once the auditor's office has verified the original signatures, and once the proposal supporters and opponents wait 30 days after the verification, the issue comes down to a race. Both sides have 30 days to get their petitions signed, either for or against the proposed project, and the side with the most signatures wins.
The fallback position, McGuire said, instead of the close-four-build-two proposal, is to take the sixth-graders from elementary schools and put them into the middle schools. However, he also noted much opposition to that proposal as well.
"As we were listening to the people at the meetings that we had, that was an overwhelming negative reaction," he said of moving sixth-graders into middle schools.
Still, having the existing elementaries absorb the students from the four smallest schools would involve major redistricting, he said, which would have occurred anyway.
"Even if we did absolutely nothing, we still would have to redistrict," he said.
And the latest proposal also wouldn't solve the problem of school buildings that are getting older and need more attention.
"People are going to see that we haven't addressed the aging buildings," he said.
Nothing would change in the coming school year, McGuire said.
The school board will meet next at 7 p.m. on Aug. 18 in the administration building.
