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GoogleAs an organizational meeting of the Dissolution Commission Committee for South Clay School District was held Tuesday in the Gillett Grove school building's board room, Barry Anderson was appointed to serve as the committee's chairperson. Joe Hoffman will serve as its vice chairperson and Mary Jo Smith agreed to serve as the dissolution committee's secretary.
Fellow committee members South Clay Superintendent David Schulz, Jim Wischmeyer, Gary Johnson and Marcia Langner were joined by Attorney Steve Avery at the meeting.
As Avery and committee members outlined the timeline needed in order for a Feb. 2, 2010, election to be held to dissolve the South Clay School District, the following dates, meetings and tasks were tentatively established:
* July 7 -- Letters to the contiguous school districts of Spencer, Sioux Central, Ruthven-Ayrshire, Clay Central-Everly, Terril and Laurens-Marathon will be sent. These will request statements outlining each district's willingness to accept students, property and tax valuations from the South Clay district.
* July 20 -- One-page letters from each of the districts willing to assume these South Clay attachments, in which district-specific information would also be relayed, will be due.
* July 27 -- A South Clay newsletter containing 2009-10 school registration information, letters received from each of the surrounding school districts describing their districts and tax rates, as well as future dissolution commission committee meeting dates, will be mailed to district patrons.
* Month of July -- Committee members will attend Spencer, Sioux Central, Ruthven-Ayrshire, Clay Central-Everly, Terril and Laurens-Marathon school board meetings. Anderson and Smith volunteered to meet with Spencer and Clay Central-Everly representatives. Johnson, Wischmeyer and Amy Burkhart agreed to visit with the Sioux Central and Laurens-Marathon boards. Hoffman and Langner offered to meet with Ruthven-Ayrshire district representatives. Hoffman and Anderson agreed to visit with the Terril school board.
* Aug. 5 -- The dissolution commission committee will meet at 8 p.m. in the South Clay district board room to finalize talking points for three public meetings set to occur this summer.
Dissolving South Clay would mean neighboring districts would absorb the rural Clay County school district. Once the South Clay district's new taxpayer and property owner lines are drawn, public meetings will be held to announce what is being proposed in both areas. These meetings are tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. on Aug. 10, in the Webb Community Center; 7 p.m. on Aug. 11, in the South Clay school building in Gillett Grove; and at 7 p.m. on Aug. 12, in the Dickens fire station.
South Clay school board members are expected to vote on the proposed dissolution presented to them by committee members on Oct. 19. A public hearing on the proposal has been slated for Dec. 9.
Following a public election on the matter in February 2010, the South Clay district's dissolution is anticipated to take effect by July 1, 2010. Matters still needing to be addressed at that time would include officially closing the building, as well as filing reports with the Iowa Department of Education and adjoining school districts, Schulz said.
South Clay dissolution background
David Schulz, who will mark his 21st year at South Clay and his eighth as the district's superintendent in 2009-10, recalls 1993-94, the first year the school building in Gillett Grove became an elementary building.
"Projections were we'd only be able to maintain a building for five more years. That five years will be 17 this next year," he said. "While most of the board and staff are saddened by the district's pending dissolution, we do feel pretty good about the fact that we've been able to provide a quality elementary education for that many years."
But South Clay representatives have always known the dissolution discussion would occur for their school district. The district's continued declining student enrollment, in combination with its increasing number of students open enrolling out of the prekindergarten through sixth grade building, prompted South Clay board members to officially consider broaching the district's dissolution this past year.
"When the preschool-through-sixth-grade school in Gillett Grove formed in 1993, we had 110 students at that time," Schulz said. It was then that South Clay began sharing its middle school and high school students with the Ruthven-Ayrshire, Sioux Central, Spencer and Laurens-Marathon districts.
The South Clay district certified 167 K-12 students last October. It's projecting 18 fewer this school year. In-house, the student number is expected to be below 50.