Anderson may close 4 schools due to budget cuts

ANDERSON, Ind. (The Herald Bulletin) - Edgewood, Forest Hills, Killbuck and 29th Street elementaries would close after this school year under cost-saving proposals presented to the Anderson Community School Board on Tuesday.

And Anderson also could become a one-high-school city.

Interim Superintendent Lennon Brown presented the board with two sobering scenarios for further school consolidation and urged members to arrive at a decision by the board’s December meeting.

Brown said the latest budget forecasts project a deficit of $9 million over the next three years, after ACS bridged much of a $5 million shortfall last year by closing Robinson and Southview elementaries and South Side Middle School.

“We need to come to grips with the reality we now face,” Brown said after presenting the board with two options for consolidation drawn from the Challenge 2010 committee’s recommendations made last year. Either plan closes the four elementaries. One plan creates one high school for grades 10-12 while the other would keep two high schools but add grades 7-8 at each school.

“It’s my sincere belief these two options present the most effective use of our buildings,” Brown told the board.

While neither plan would by itself bridge the budget gap in coming years, ACS Business Manager Kevin Brown said negotiations are ongoing with the Anderson Federation of Teachers to find savings that would put ACS near its budget target.

He said swift board action was needed because deadlines for such changes are looming at the start of the year. “The longer we go, the more deadlines we miss for saving costs.”

The ACS business manager said if the board failed to act, the system would face insolvency. “If the board does nothing, we will get to a point ... where we will not be able to make payroll.”

ACS lost 352 students this school year systemwide compared with last year — a figure that translates roughly to a loss of $2.1 million in state funding. Declines in tax receipts, a problem facing all units of local government, make the problem worse. The board Tuesday adopted a budget for the coming year that reduces spending in line with previously enacted cuts.

Board President P.T. Morgan said the decision won’t be easy. “There’s not a sitting board member that wants to discuss this issue,” he said, noting a preference to discuss what’s in the best interests of schoolchildren. “We have to do some homework, soul-searching on a major decision that we’ll have to make in a few shot months.”

Board member Tobi Jones asked interim Superintendent Brown whether he had a preference of the options.

“Honest to goodness, if I had a preference, I’d like to stay where I am,” he said.

In another development, Morgan said the meeting that the board’s superintendent search has been narrowed from nine candidates to five, but he declined to disclose names. He said the board hoped to announce a new superintendent by December, and that he expected names of candidates would be disclosed when the field is narrowed to two finalists.

Morgan would not say whether two ACS executives — Lennon Brown and Transportation/Title I Director Nancy Farley — were among the five remaining candidates.

From WISH-TV news gathering partner The Herald Bulletin .