A big change could be coming for students and staff next year, as the Brown County Schools Board of Trustees is considering closing Brown County Intermediate School.
Superintendent Laura Hammack presented a 10-year vision for Brown County Schools at the Feb. 4 board meeting. She discussed the challenges that declining enrollment brings to the district, including a lack of funding from the state.
Projections show the district losing more than $1.2 million by school year 2023-2024.
The enrollment for this school year is 1,660 students. For 2023-2024, that number is projected to be 1,548 — a loss of 112 students.
One of the strategies to combat continued declining funding is closing BCIS this June and using the building for a different purpose.
BCIS serves all fifth- and sixth-graders now, while seventh- and eighth-graders attend Brown County Junior High School and preK- to fourth-graders attend Helmsburg, Sprunica or Van Buren elementary.
Under the reorganization plan, current fourth-graders would remain in their elementary schools for fifth grade. Current fifth-graders would move to the junior high school for sixth grade and the junior high would be renamed Brown County Middle School. The middle school then would serve all the district’s sixth- through eighth-graders.
To keep the number of certified staff in line with the closure and to avoid firing teachers, retirement incentives are being offered to teachers and non-certified staff like custodians.
The district needs to save at least $500,000 for next school year. If five certified teachers decide to retire, that will equal about $450,000, according to Hammack’s presentation.
If five teachers and 10 non-certified staff do not take the retirement incentives, reduction in force (RIF) notices will have to be issued until those numbers are met.
BCIS would then repurposed into the the “Educational Service Center,” which will be the new home of the Brown County Career Resource Center. The plan would be to sell the current CRC building on East Main Street and then use the money from that sale to help in renovating BCIS to “better serve adult learners,” the presentation states.
The Educational Service Center would also be used to expand early childcare and learning that could serve infants through school-aged children. A preschool classroom already opened in the BCIS building earlier this winter; with this change, the building also could house a daycare. This summer, the district plans to expand the preschool program in that building to serve 2-year-olds as well as the 3- to 5-year-olds already there.
“Our vision is that over the next few years, we would be able to serve in that space infant to school-aged children who are ready to go to their elementary school, then graduate across that stage 12 years down the lane,” Hammack said.
The district’s moderate and severe special education classroom for kindergartners through sixth-graders has been housed at BCIS. That classroom would be moved to one of the elementary schools and would serve those students in kindergarten to fifth grade, which will require some room modifications at whichever elementary school is picked. Sixth- through 12th-graders will be served in the moderate and severe classroom at the high school.
Fifth-grade athletic programming will continue with this proposed change, Hammack said. There is also potential for the BCIS building to be used for community meetings. Moving the administrative offices there in 2022 from the “white house” on East Main Street was also something Hammack mentioned as a possibility in her presentation to the board.
BCIS was created in 2013 when Nashville Elementary School was closed, to help with a $1 million deficit the district was facing in the then-general fund. That plan was one of nine money-saving options that were presented to the board at the time. Most of the district’s upper administrative team and school board are different now than they were then.
Why is this happening?
Because enrollment continues to decline and the district no longer has reductions it can make in the budget, bigger changes have to be considered. “We don’t have anything left to cut in the current circumstance we find ourselves in. We’ve tapped it,” Hammack said.
- Since the 2009-2010 school year, enrollment in Brown County Schools has been on the decline. As enrollment declines, so does the per-student funding the district receives from the state.
- Since Hammack started in 2016 as superintendent, multiple budget cuts have been made, totaling $4,573,000. At the same time, the district has also been able to build its cash reserves, including $2 million in the rainy day fund. “These dollars are going to play a very critical role for us in our solution on the other side of this problem we find ourselves in,” she said.
- Since 2000, the 65-and-up population in the county has grown by 98.8 percent while the population that is most likely to have children, aged 25 to 44, has decreased by 28.8 percent, A lower number of babies are also being born in the county, but Hammack reported last week that the district has reported seeing a stabilization of that decline, which helps forecast kindergarten enrollment in five years.
- The school district worked with a demographer to create an enrollment forecast of high, most likely and low enrollment forecasts. This school year, the district’s enrollment is below the “low” predicted. The prediction was losing 45 students; the reality was losing 100. “We believe 55 are a direct result of COVID,” Hammack told the board. In 2009-2010, enrollment was 2,130; by 2029, the “low enrollment” forecast is 1,450.
On the bright side
- Enrollment is predicted to decline at a slower rate in the next 10 years. From 2007 to 2016, it declined by 16 percent; from 2019 to 2028, it’s predicted to decline by little over 8 percent. “We believe stabilization is going to be realized in about 10 years, but we still have 10 years of enrollment decline that we need to be thoughtful of and we need to get ahead of when it comes to our bottom line,” Hammack said.
- Since 2016, the district has lost nearly $1 million in funding from the state, but it has been able to secure multiple grants to do things like create the Eagle Manufacturing program at Brown County High School, expand preschool to seven classrooms and create a social-emotional learning counseling model in all schools.
- Moving the CRC to the new Educational Service Center in the BCIS building not only would allow the district to sell the current CRC, but it also would allow the CRC more space to expand programming. During the pandemic, the CRC had a record number of students get their high school equivalency degrees and continue to break adult education benchmarks in the region. “We’re primed to grow this incredible organization; we just need the space to do it,” Hammack said.
- With only three schools in their preK-to-12th career, students will experience fewer school transitions with BCIS being eliminated. “Research is very clear that the less transition a student has from school to school has a positive impact on student achievement,” Hammack said.
Any other options?
When forecasting the next 10 years for Brown County Schools and the need to save money, Hammack said “every other option under the sun” was considered.
That included closing an elementary school, which was not possible due to how spread out the district is. “Our students are on the bus so long to begin with, that would be really a challenge,” she said.
Creating one junior-senior high school also was considered, but the district has too many students to condense both of those schools right now, Hammack said.
The intermediate school going back to an elementary schedule instead of students going to multiple classrooms in a day also was considered, but that move would have only cut two teacher positions when the district needed to cut five, Hammack said.
What about staff?
Staff at Brown County Intermediate School were made aware of the proposed closing after school on Jan. 4.
“The idea of the intermediate school was a great idea. It has served our district so well. Our teachers and staff love being there. (Principal) Trent (Austin)’s leadership has been second to none. It’s an amazing school. It’s an ‘A’ school. It’s a great place for students to come in to learn,” Hammack said.
Austin attended the school board meeting. “Our board would be very proud of our superintendent today for how she presented the information to our intermediate school teachers. It’s a very difficult message to share, but absolutely the job was done with grace and dignity,” he said.
“They understand why the decision was made.”
Jobs will need to be filled at Helmsburg, Sprunica and Van Buren elementary schools to teach fifth-graders there next school year, and at Brown County Middle School to teach sixth-graders. After those are filled, five teaching jobs will need to be eliminated to get a savings of around $450,000 to $500,000, Hammack explained.
The goal is to not have to issue RIF notices, or pink slips, to teachers, which is why a tiered level of retirement incentives will be offered to teachers beginning Feb. 5. There are three levels of incentives that would be deposited into the teacher’s retirement plan at the end of the school year: $35,000, $30,000 or $25,000, which Hammack characterized as being among the largest retirement incentives in the state.
The sooner a teacher decides to retire, the more money he or she will receive in their plan. The first incentive round ends March 12, the second will be from March 13 to April 2, and the final window will be April 3 to May 1.
“The whole goal there is to incentivize speed so that we can begin to ensure that our folks who, right now, are deeply concerned about where they will be next year, that we will begin to be able to better understand where folks will go,” Hammack said.
She said leaders will work with the Brown County Educators Association to refine the best placement plan and timeline for teachers.
Board member Amy Oliver wanted to make sure that the message was clear that the district was not doing this to encourage older teachers to retire so that they could be replaced with younger teachers who are less expensive. “That is not the purpose of this. The purpose of this is very much to avoid RIFing. It really is. You are doing this school corporation a favor by taking the incentive. It’s something that we want those five teachers to do,” she said.
“It’s something that is rewarding rather than some type of, ‘Yes you’ve been great, but now you’re not needed anymore.’ I want to make sure our teachers know and understand that is not the purpose of this. They are deeply appreciated.”
Hammack said the district worked with the educators association when discussing possible solutions and that this was “an innovative solution to try to protect all educators.”
Non-certified staff members will also be offered a tiered incentive beginning at $10,000, then $7,500, then $5,000, which is an average of the non-certified staff salaries over the course of the year, just like how the teacher incentives were figured, Hammack said.
Depending on which staff members take the incentive and how much they are paid by the district, the number of staff needed to take the incentive to reach a savings of around $150,000 ranges from six to 10, Hammack said.
Board President Carol Bowden said not issuing RIF notices was important.
“We like to do opportunity instead. I know I appreciate this opportunity potential for our staff and I sincerely hope it works out for all parties involved,” she said.
Parents and community members can submit questions or ideas about this move on the Brown County Schools website, browncountyschools.com, under the “resources” tab. That information will be used to create a FAQ document that will then be shared with the board and public.
The school board will be asked to vote on implementing these strategies at the Thursday, Feb. 18 board meeting.
After the retirement incentives are accepted, announcements will be made on where administrators and staff will be working next year.
