Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Monday at 7 p.m., the Warsaw School Board will hear a report by the School Status and Option Committee on a study regarding Warsaw schools.
Terry Sims, committee member, said Friday that the committee was given a mission statement to find out the conditions and status of Warsaw schools and to generate short-term and long-term options.
He said the study has been a major undertaking, with the committee meeting every other Tuesday for two hours since April. They looked at only the elementary and middle schools, not the high school.
The committee will present the school board with options and recommendations. Sims said the committee doesn't have one they think is better than the other. "We're not going to prioritize those," he said.
The committee is providing the school board with options the committee felt weren't viable, too, and why they aren't viable.
Some of the short-term options the committee will discuss at Monday's meeting include addition of portable classrooms, renting classroom space, transporting classes from one school to another, and reopening Claypool Elementary as a K-4 school while another elementary is built.
Long-term options to be discussed include closing Jefferson and building two new four-section schools; reopening Claypool as a three-section school and building one new four-section school in the northeast part of the district; and building two new four-section schools, one in the northeast part and one in the southern part of the district.
The committee also will go over the options they considered but ultimately rejected. General recommendations to the school board will be made, too.
Sims said the presentation probably will not last more than an hour. After the presentation, Sims said one thing the school board will have to do is decide if they want to have a public work session on the options. The board could consider using the recommendations singularly or combine elements of them. He said he doesn't know what the board will do with the recommendations, but it's "been a major undertaking."
For the study, Sims said the committee gathered information from various sources, including the Chamber of Commerce, Kosciusko Area Plan Commission, Warsaw Plan Commission, Realtor's Association, interviews, tours of the Warsaw and other schools, the Gann-McKibben 2003 demographic projection report and other sources.
There are 22 committee members. Sims said each of the Warsaw schools was represented by a Parent-Teacher Organization member. Other members include a representative of each of the townships in the school district (Prairie, Plain, Wayne, Clay and Lake); an elementary school teacher, a middle school teacher and a high school teacher; two administrators, one elementary and one middle school; and two former school board members.
"We had a very broad representation," said Sims.
The meeting will be held at the Central Instructional Materials Center Training Room, 1 Administration Drive, Warsaw.
Warsaw School Board members are Ron Yeiter, Gene England, Chuck Sauders, Tammy Dalton, Dan Robinson, Deb Wiggins and Cathy Folk.
