By Chris Hagan
Review Staff Writer
The school board could possibly be closing a school next year, but administrators say they are not likely to sell it and would rather re-purpose it into something that could bring the district money.
This was just one of the topics discussed at the Lake Orion Community Schools community forum on July 21. Also discussed was the re-districting of students following a school closure, and programs the school is researching to aid in student development.
The board is taking a two-phase approach to balancing the schools operating budget and examining the potential to right-size the district due to declining enrollment throughout the state and Orion.
Phase One saw reductions in staffing and looked at every possible place to cut dollars without affecting student programs. Privatizing busing and food service were considered and put out for bid, but according to LOCS school board President Scott Taylor, it was determined that based on bids from different companies it would not save the district any money and those two areas were not to be privatized.
Phase two focuses on right-sizing the district due to declining enrollment and aging out of the population; for example, the district has 500 students in kindergarten and they graduated 600 students (rough numbers according to Taylor).
Plante Moran is studying and reviewing the conditions of the facilities the district owns. The review will determine if a building, or buildings, should be closed and if so, which ones.
In order to close the budget gap, Taylor said all members of LOCS gave concessions from administration, transportation, food service and support staff, and early childhood staff members. With the elimination of several positions, the board approved a balanced budget for the 2017 school year and is working through an 18-month plan to restore the districts fund balance back up to the auditor recommendation of 10 percent.
The school board ended with a net operating surplus of just over $155,000 and the fund balance is expected to be at $5.8 million, with a 7.4% fund balance to expenditure ratio.
Plante Moran’s review will wrap up this month and on Sept. 17 the LOCS board has scheduled an all day workshop where Plante Moran will be presenting their findings to the school board.
“Our hope is that we’re going to be able to identify a school to close but we don’t have that information at this point,” LOCS Superintendent Marion Ginopolis said. “I know a lot of people have asked which school are you going to close, but we don’t have the results of Plante Moran’s study.”
Ginopolis followed up by saying that the study could include recommending closing one or more schools but the final numbers are not yet known. In November, the board hopes to announce whether they’re going to close a school and which school that will be. When that information is decided upon, their goal is to officially close that school, or schools, in September 2017 and introduce a new re-districting plan.
“As we have said in the past, especially if you’re going to be closing a school, it will really create a re-districting of all of our children and that’s not a pleasant task,” Ginopolis said. “With re-districting, I know that change is very difficult and we want to be very careful, very thoughtful, and very strategic in how we go about do it so it has the least effect on our children and families.”
If the district does decide to close a school, Ginopolis says the board would like to re-purpose the school to bring in specialized programs that could be revenue-generating for the district. She says that closing and then selling a school is a shortsighted plan that could negatively affect the district. If the community sees a large influx of residents, the district would have to build a school to house those new students and go through re-districting again.
“Any change we make will result in re-districting and where we have our children going to our schools,” Ginopolis said.
Another aspect of their phase two plan is to look at ways to integrate specialized content into all schools and enhance existing curriculum. The board is looking into additional programming options, with no plan of full implementation yet. The programs the board are studying and researching are STEAM, World Language, Leader in Me, and Cultures of Thinking— all of which are being tested on a small scale at various schools in the district.
STEAM emphasizes a focus on science, technology, engineering, arts and math. Stadium Drive Elementary has started some of the STEAM concepts on a small scale, from student-based morning announcements that allow the students to record and edit, to using small robots to introduce students to the world of coding. Stadium Drive principal Rob Murray said STEAM is giving the students great knowledge but there has to be more.
“What we’ve noticed with what we’ve done with STEAM this year, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, that although the work we did was engaging to kids and it was something they liked and learned a lot from, it still just gave them some knowledge, gave them some skill, but we didn’t ask them to apply it to a real world situation,” Murray said.
Murray then talked about Project-based Learning, and said that Stadium Drive will have fifth grade classes piloting a project that applies knowledge and skill in a real world situation.
“We’re looking to tap into the local piece to our community, people that could be willing to help our students learn and put things together in the context of the project and then come back later and give us feed back,” he said.
The World Language Project is something the district does not offer at the elementary level but does through the community education department, for a cost. The thought would be to introduce a selected world language at an elementary level and be able to continue a focus on that langue into the collegiate level.
Leader in Me is a project the district is looking at and it was taken from the book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. They focus on seven habits including being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, putting first things first, thinking win-win, seeking first to understand before being understood, synergizing and sharpening the saw. Leader in Me is currently being tested in Orion Oaks Elementary with much success in interpersonal relationships.
“Those are the habits that our students and staff members are following on a daily basis and we’re embodying it as a whole school,” said Orion Oaks Principal Ken Nuss.
The final program the district is exploring is Cultures of Thinking and it’s a framework for enriching classroom learning with the goals of deeper understanding of content, greater motivation for learning and development of learners’ thinking and learning. The goal is to adapt a more visual approach for delivery and make the process of thinking visible.
Visible thinking includes a number of ways of making students’ thinking visible to themselves, to their peers and to the teacher so they are more engaged and better able to manage thinking for learning. Its hope is to engage that student and expose their learning process to the educator and address any issues that may be causing.
“There are a 1,000 different programs that we could be offering in Lake Orion but the bottom line, what to continue to think about and ensuring, that no matter what program we’re offering we are making sure that we are focusing on the core instruction that our students are being provided,” Assistant Superintendent Heidi Mercer said.