The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
By David Grimes for The Quill
STRONGHURST - More than 50 people attended a joint meeting of the Southern and LaHarpe school boards Wednesday night at the SHS gym that turned into a question-and-answer session on the school reorganization options of consolidation and convergence.
LaHarpe Superintendent Jo Campbell and LHS Principal Charlie Apt and Southern Principal Dale Buss attended the meeting. Southern Superintendent Charlie Barber did not attend.
Taking the form of a late night television infomercial, questions generated for the most part by Southern School Board Vice President Doug Brooks were fielded primarily by LaHarpe Superintendent Jo Campbell and LaHarpe School Board President Barb Cox.
School district consolidation involves a pre-K through 12 merger agreement between two districts; convergence deals with the creation of a new high school district only, with participating districts maintaining their own grade schools.
Questions dealt with timeline requirements for ballot placement of a school reorganization referendum, administrative needs in a high school convergence, division of district assets and the possibility of other school districts joining a newly formed district down the road.
"Is convergence a new word?" Brooks asked.
Cox said LaHarpe first was introduced to the term by Nauvoo-Colusa and Dallas City, when merger talks began with those districts.
She said the LaHarpe board wished they had known about convergence as a reorganization option when talks were taking place last year with Roseville and Northwest.
A survey sent out by the LaHarpe School Board to LaHarpe School District voters this winter harvested an unusually high return rate of 34 percent. Of five reorganization options, including the opportunity to do nothing at all, two offered a reorganization option including LaHarpe, Dallas City, Nauvoo-Colusa and Carthage.
Of all options offered on the survey, LaHarpe voters indicated the reorganization option with Southern to be the one they least preferred.
But Brooks indicated he bore no ill will toward the LaHarpe community since he realized now that what they really wanted was a reorganization choice including more than two districts and involving a convergence proposal. Southern was not an attractive option as a reorganization partner to the people of the LaHarpe School District, he said he now realizes, because Southern was offered alone as a merger mate and not in the context of a convergence.
The LaHarpe board found the provision for keeping the pre-K through eighth-grade students within local control "very attractive," she said.
Several members of the Committee of Ten for the current Southern-Union consolidation proposal slated for this November's ballot attended as well, and were asked for clarification on a number of issues.
Brooks was asked whether bringing another district into the discussion at this time wasn't working against the Union-Southern ballot effort.
He said that while the Committee of Ten "should be commended for the immense amount of work" they have accomplished, the Southern board feels as though they have not done everything possible to explore all reorganization options on behalf of the community.
Former Southern teacher and administrator Bob Scott asked if there is a danger of waiting too long in exploring every option and losing out on the district's opportunity to make a decision for itself.
Even if the district were on the eve of an election where a reorganization decision would be made and another option presented itself, he would take the time needed to explore that option, Brooks said.
Marty Lafary, who has lived in both the Southern and Union school districts, questioned the board's wisdom in seeking to relocate its high school population outside of Henderson County.
"It's going to hurt the county if you do that," Lafary said.