Staff Writer
NEW SWEDEN — The New Sweden School board held their regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 3. Topics of discussion included an update on physical education and health, the superintendent's update on staffing and scheduling changes for special education programming, information regarding the annual audit. Much time, however, was spent discussing school reorganization. The transition committee, which has been working to piece together the details of school reorganization, doesn't have any additional meetings planned.
"The transition committee, at this point, has basically been dissolved. They're not scheduling anymore meetings," said Hedman, "The consensus is that from here on in, it's entirely up to each individual community to decide how to disseminate information and what forms they want to use. "
The transition committee has created a Power Point presentation that explains how school reorganization is going to work; the New Sweden school board intends on using the information from the power point to hopefully create an informational handout for the members of their community.
"I'll give credit to the people of the transition committee," said John Hedman, Superintendent of School Union 122, "for trying to synthesize and summarize to the point where the average person could get a grasp, and I think that they did a creditable job."
A dinner was scheduled at the school cafeteria at 5:30 Tuesday to discuss reorganization with the citizens in order to help the community understand the process better.
A mandatory public hearing is being planned in New Sweden for the near future.
The operational costs for the remainder of the 2008 – 2009 school year was also a hot topic of discussion during the school board meeting. With talks about government subsidies being decreased, anticipatory preparations for such an event are currently being discussed by the New Sweden school board. Schools like New Sweden may receive only 23 government subside payments over two years instead of the regular 24
"If we want to keep the school the way it is," Hedman said to the school board, "we’ve got to start living on a $900,000 budget."
"The numbers are rather grim," he added, "when you do a budget, you have to prepare for the worst case scenario."
Change, though most likely inevitable, is not something that the New Sweden school board necessarily looks forward to. The consensus is that New Sweden residents are pleased with the high quality of education their students receive at their school and worry about how budget cuts are going to affect that prized educational quality, according to Hedman.
"You can save a lot of money by closing schools and tuitioning your kids, and that is one of the options," Hedman said, "it's very apparent, though, that what we have at the New Sweden school is highly valued; people are willing to look hard to find a way to keep it."
"The reality is setting in with the current economics and our actual budget and our needs," Hedman added, "life as it's been may no longer be affordable. Your per-pupil cost in New Sweden is way over the average," Hedman added, "as of last January, cost about $9,000 per student; in Woodland, it's $6,400 per student."
The school board is currently working on ways to conserve funds.
Results from the dinner will be available in next week’s paper.
