SW Parke identifies 'Big Five' themes for Revision Project

After a wave of public meetings pertaining to the future of the Southwest Parke Community School district and its Revision project, district officials have identified the "Big Five" themes that have come from faculty and staff, as well as community members.

The SW Parke School Board held a special session to go over survey findings and discuss what the future of the school district may look like in the near future. The 40 minute meeting was informational only and the only vote taken was to adjourn the meeting. 

Superintendent Dr. Phil Harrison told those in attendance the district heard back from a little less than 30 percent of staff and about 10 percent from the community. 

Harrison said he and his administration team took the results and ran them through AI and five themes continued to come up. Those themes included: school facility consolidation and grade alignment, personnel reduction, administrative and operational overhead, county wide consolidation and revenue generation. 

Harrison said elementary consolidation was one of the most mentioned themes, and much of that had to do with the enrollment of Montzuma, as well as the proximity of Rosedale to Vigo County. 

"Grade realignment was a big talking point. There were a lot of folks who thought moving 6th to Riverton Parke was a good thing to do," Harrison said. 

In addition, Harrison said people are concerned with class sizes, as well as commute times. 

During the public comment portion, the board and Harrison was asked twice about class sizes. 

"We have talked about all kinds of things. If we take fifth and sixth graders from Rosedale and Montezuma, they can fit into this facility," Harrison said during the meeting, which was held at Riverton Parke. "The remaining students can fit into Rosedale. The big picture vision is let's get everyone on one campus, under one roof."

Harrison was again asked if all the students in the district would fit into Riverton Parke without construction.  

"I don't believe we can bring all the schools into this facility without some construction. We would have to add on. We cannot do one giant move all at once," he said. 

In terms of personnel, Harrison said there were questions about how the district would staff the buildings, what criteria would be used to make sure staff is hired and when would staff be notified. 

"Effectiveness is our number one characteristic we will look at. 

We saw a lot of questions about timing and notifications. We have to have things hammered out before we start notifying people.There were also questions about how many administrators do we have and do we need them all, as well as what we are paying our administrators," Harrison said. 

Harrison said there was some discussion about county-wide consolidation, but warned that consolidating with Parke Heritage could result in a loss of voice at the table for his families. 

He said the last piece was revenue generation and program fees, with a lot of discussion about charging tuition for preschool. 

"Also, there was some interesting dialogue about fees. We cannot go back to charging textbook fees. One question that kept coming up was can we go back to charging students for lunches again. One of the last suggestions was a four day school week. The state of Indiana has pilot programs going on for four day school weeks. We would have to get permission to make a change." Harrison said. 

Darrek Davis, school board president, said he had seen talk online of the board already having made up its mind. 

"That is farthest from the truth. We are still gathering information. I have no clue what direction we are going to go in. I have my own feelings. Priority number one, I don't want to close these schools. That impacts children's education. I'm going to be a no vote if it comes to closing these schools. I think there's some things we can trim within the corporation to get us through another year. A lot of this stuff, our hands are tied by the Indiana General Assembly. We can keep the ship afloat for another year, see what mandates come out of the General Assembly and deal with that then. We are definitely going to look at everything that is on the table right now," Davis said.