The Vigo County Oversight Board should keep looking at all the options as far as Vigo County School Corp. facilities, state Sen. Greg Goode, R-Terre Haute, told the group Thursday.
Further, the board should not be rushed to meet anyone else’s timelines, said Goode, who was invited to speak to the group.
Goode, who is up for election in Tuesday’s primary, authored legislation that allowed for the creation of the oversight board to study and vet facility options as well as look at if and how the county might be able to help VCSC.
He told the oversight board, “In my eyes, you are doing your job,” which includes collecting and vetting multiple options.
Goode said the overall process underway is “playing out about 90% of what I envisioned.”
The legislation provided for a mechanism that ensured transparency and use of a data-driven process to review options to address school facility issues without raising property taxes, Goode said.
He also addressed ways the process hasn’t played out as he envisioned.
“I think maybe some folks got over their skis a little bit,” Goode said.
A facility plan was presented to the Vigo County Council before the oversight board was established. “I was puzzled by that,” he said.
“Unfortunately, what it has presented is a false narrative … that has pitted one side against another side based on one plan,” he said.
It also made it appear the oversight board was “part of a nefarious plot to rubber stamp whatever the school corporation wants,” he said. “I don’t believe that.”
Last June, the Vigo County School Board endorsed what it calls Option 6. That plan would consolidate the district’s buildings from 23 to 16, with 10 elementary schools, four middle schools and two high schools.
The two high-school part of the plan — a modernized West Vigo and a new, single school to replace Terre Haute North and Terre Haute South — has drawn some public pushback.
Goode said he sees a “healthy tension” between the oversight board and some of the other stakeholders involved. “That is a good thing. That is precisely what I had envisioned,” he said.
He encouraged the oversight board to “keep doing what you are doing, look at all of the options, ask the tough questions, use the data to inform your analysis … and continue to take public feedback.”
Goode also urged the board not to allow others “to force their timeline on you.”
Instead, he encouraged them to follow their own timeline “to do what’s right for our community.”
The process is making Vigo County a pilot, and test case, for the entire state. “All eyes from around Indiana are on us,” he said.
School district’s response
After the meeting, VCSC superintendent Chris Himsel said, “We recognized they were to vet all of the options, which is the reason we walked them through how we went through each of the options we considered.”
The district has also looked at a few more options since then, based on questions asked by the oversight board and information from patrons, he said.
“We do stand by Option 6,” Himsel said. The district has done a deep dive, and that plan addresses facility needs and provides long-term savings in the education and operations funds. It also allows the district to live within its means now and into the future.
The district understands the job of the oversight board is to find out, “Is there a better option we should be considering, and they’ve been asking those questions … and they have invited us and challenged us to dig a little deeper on some things, which is exactly what the process should do.”
The district is awaiting the oversight board’s conclusions and “we have been tweaking what we do based on the questions and answers we get, and that continues,” Himsel said.
The Athletic Association
Also speaking to the oversight board were representatives of the Wabash Valley Athletic Association — President Jennifer Templeton and board member James Twitchell.
They addressed concerns that if North and South are consolidated, it would limit participation in athletics. They said a consolidation would increase opportunities for participation and potentially increase the number of sports offered, and they offered supportive data.
“Opportunities will be aplenty with a consolidated school, if that’s the direction the oversight committee recommends and the county is able to support,” Twitchell said after the meeting.
“I think the opportunities will be endless not only to add sports, potentially, that we don’t currently offer, but also roster sizes — maybe expanding levels [of play or competition],” he said.
Twitchell suggested freshman A and B teams could be offered again in sports like basketball.
With track and field, it could provide a greater opportunity for multiple relay teams; some schools now struggle to have enough relay teams because they don’t have the numbers for the amount of events in that sport.
The ability to attract coaches has also been impacted by under-enrolled athletic programs and lack of overall success in some of the programs, he said.
“When positions open up, our candidate pool has just not been as strong as it maybe once was,” Twitchell said. “We do have some great coaches out there … but not all across the board.”
Oversight Board President Mark Elliottt said he believed it was important to bring in the WVAA because of concerns being expressed that a consolidated school would limit sports opportunities.
However, athletics ultimately will not be a driver in the oversight board’s final recommendations, Elliott said.
“I don’t think athletics weigh in it at all as long as we can check the box and confirm with facts and research we’re not going to be limiting opportunities for the students.”
In a separate matter, the oversight board approved payment of an invoice for $6,100 to Barnes and Thornburg for services through March 31, the group’s legal counsel.