The engagement is off.
Before the figures were finalized and even before public town-hall style meetings could be held next month for residents to weigh-in, consolidation talks between West Geauga and Newbury school districts have ended.
With very little discussion at their March 13 evening meeting, West Geauga Schools Board of Education voted 5-0 to discontinue its financial feasibility study of the proposed merger.
In adding the motion to the agenda, Superintendent Richard Markwardt said the Newbury Schools Board of Education had met earlier that morning and voted 4-1 to end the discussion.
“Preliminary information showed it could have yielded beneficial results,” Markwardt said.
“I think it’s wonderful that the Newbury board has a lot of pride in their school,” West Geauga BOE President Dan Thoreson said. “I would have liked for both of our boards to have gotten together for a public discussion, but we never got to that point.”
“We planned to have public discussions on a merger in April, once the study was complete and we had good information,” West Geauga BOE member Ben Kotowski added. “It could not have worked without community buy-in.”
In a March 14 press release, Newbury BOE President Susan Arnold stated that during focus groups, “Residents, staff, students, parents and community members shared their concerns that they’ve had a school district here for 89 years and, for many people, it was a difficult conversation to give up their local school district.”
She explained detailed financial data provided did not overwhelmingly support a consolidation at this time.
“This decision was not one the board took lightly,” Arnold said. “It was only after much careful and thoughtful review of significant data were we able to reach our decision.”
Also in the Newbury press release, Superintendent Michelle Mrakovich stated, “As we move forward we want residents, families and our community to know the board and administration are dedicated to providing a quality education while being mindful and prudent with taxpayer dollars. We look forward to engaging the community in developing a long-range plan designed to ensure the highest levels of academic success for all students in the Newbury Local School district.”
On Tuesday, Mrakovich replied to an email from the Geauga County Maple Leaf seeking additional comment on the Newbury board’s action.
“We stated in several instances that the board would continue to have open dialogue with the community at board meetings as information became available. We also stated that we expected information would start becoming available in March or April,” she said. “At the March 6 meeting, the board commented that we may have a decision as early as the week of March 13.”
The superintendent also addressed one Newbury resident’s comment on social media that a West Geauga board member had told him Newbury undermined the consolidation effort by a lack of desire and unrealistic demands.
“As is common in these situations, there has been a lot of hearsay, much of that hearsay is untrue,” she said.
Newbury parent Maggie Zock disagreed with any suggestion the community was not in favor of consolidation.
She attended the West Geauga meeting and said she felt there was support among Newbury residents for a merger with West Geauga.
During the West Geauga meeting, Treasurer Karen Penler presented a timeline of the discussions between the schools. The decision was to have been made in June, she said.
“I was going to present some preliminary financial figures tonight, but, in light of what happened, I’m not going to show them,” she said.
Suggesting that ending the talks might have been premature, Penler said both boards passed resolutions to explore a merger in June 2016 and the exploration time period was to span until June 2017.
She said she had finalized income figures, but only preliminary expense-side figures at this point.
“We asked an independent, third-party firm, PRF (Public Finance Resources), to do a five-year forecast,” Penler explained. “They have done a lot of merger work with schools in Ohio.”
She identified several sticking points in the forecast, including standardizing the numbers to the same fiscal year and looking at the impact to collective bargaining contracts, along with the impact of blending the emergency levies passed by both schools, which have a fixed cap on collections.
Further complicating those figures were the permanent improvement tax levies, which are collected at different rates.
“We would have had to spread the different tax rates and amounts between the two districts,” Penler said.
When asked after the meeting about Newbury’s assertion of March 6 that the expense-side financial information was not being shared with them, Penler disagreed.
“We’ve sent the information back and forth several times, including Sunday night (March 12),” Penler said.
Penler said one set of information she received from Newbury showed a possible discrepancy of about $3 million, for example.
“There’s a lot of work that goes into having accurate comparisons,” Penler explained. “Now it’s all been a waste of my time.”
When asked after the meeting how the preliminary figures looked, Penler said they looked favorable and that West Geauga’s tax rate was lower than Newbury’s, indicating it might have been more favorable for Newbury taxpayers.
But Mrakovich said the figures painted a different picture.
“The two districts entered into an agreement to look at the possible benefits of consolidation. The results of that study have not provided the financials both districts had hoped for,” she said in her March 14 email reply.
A statement released late Monday night from West Geauga left the door open to consolidation. It stated, “preliminary data from multiple sources indicates that such a consolidation would not be in the best interest of West Geauga Schools at this time.”
Asked about whether Newbury would look to renew consolidation talks with Berkshire Schools and Kent State University, Mrakovich said, “There are no plans to enter into any conversations regarding consolidation at this time.”
