Traveling down East Hillside and High Street, Templeton and Childs elementary schools are less than 10 minutes apart by car and 11 by bike.
If the superintendent’s proposal goes forward, the two schools could merge–Childs hosting pre-k through second grade and Templeton grades three through six.
The Monroe County Community School board plans to schedule community forums with parents and teachers before convening in March to address the potential merger again.
Parents spoke to the school board for more than an hour at its meeting Tuesday night, over concerns about the merger.
Katie King has four children who are in or have gone through Templeton’s multiage program. Since the pandemic, this is the first school year that’s felt normal to her and is concerned about further disruption.
“The kids who will be impacted by this proposed school change are the ones that did not receive preschool did kindergarten on the iPad had to sit three feet apart and face forward during school days and could not be rough and tumble on the playground.”
The merger is part of an effort to balance socioeconomic status levels among schools in the district. King said the district needs to address disparities but wants more information.
“Even just the basics of logistics, and transportation, what that would mean,” she said. “I also feel pretty strongly about the benefit of a K through six school.”
The school corporation measured socioeconomic disparities by using rates of students who qualify for free and reduced lunch at its 14 elementary schools.
Childs has one of the lowest rates, at 15 percent of students qualifying. Templeton has one of the higher rates– 64 percent.
In December, the board also heard a proposal to combine University and Fairview schools. It scrapped that merger idea Tuesday after parent feedback at the meeting concerning transportation and an ongoing transition of the district’s advanced learning program to Fairview.
Jason Winters is a parent at Childs. He says the board’s actions don’t feel transparent and that a school merger was possible for longer than communicated.
“I'd like to know whether we've looked at all the reasonable methods for balancing SES, including redistricting,” Winters said.
Winters wants to know what analyses was done to identify mergers as a solution, and if this is the best method.
He agreed the district equity should be addressed but wants outlined goals and expected outcomes, which would be required in a redistricting process.
Some parents at Tuesday’s meeting said school redistricting would be a more effective strategy for balancing socioeconomic status
School Board President April Hennessey said she’s excited to hear the community bring up redistricting and many board members are ready to take the process on.
“I would also like to see us have a discussion about redistricting, I mean, we have people saying it in the room,” Hennessey said.
The board agreed to start gathering information on redistricting for discussion at its March meeting.
Hennessey said mergers and redistricting are not mutually exclusive and that redistricting can take a long time.
“Some of the reasons why we're moving forward with smaller scale mergers and things like that is because you can create integration by merging schools,” she said.
Board member Brandon Shurr said gathering support for redistricting has been a challenge in the past and feels hesitant that it’s coming up now when there is a proposed change.
“I'm excited, everyone's excited for redistricting,” Shurr said. “But I'm a little bit leery that that support is not actually there. It’s to distract from the change that we are talking about possibly making.”
King, a clinical social worker, is glad the board is receptive to redistricting and doesn’t think the merger will fix district-wide issues.
“One thing that I feel hopeful about is the community conversation. So I love that they were talking about having meetings at each of the schools to get more of the parents involved.”
The board plans to gather more information on school mergers and redistricting and will address both at its March meeting.
