Merger Update: Schools Waiting On Wausa Survey Results

From news partner US92

The four schools are going wait and see what comes of Wausa’s recent survey before making any major decisions on consolidation.

The school districts of Osmond, Wausa, Bloomfield, and Creighton met Wednesday evening in Osmond and tried to develop a strategy after Plainview dropped out of the study because of their local survey.

They really could not take the next step because the chance remains that Wausa may drop out and take the number of school districts down to three. Those three schools: Osmond, Bloomfield and Creighton are geographically the furthest from the each other.

Wausa remained mum during the meeting about their status because their officials were unsure what would come of their meeting, which is scheduled for Monday, July 13th.

Superintendent of Osmond Community Schools David Hamm said that even if Wausa were to pull out of the process, the other three schools would still be talking.

“I think the consensus is even those three schools will continue to talk, just to always look at the opportunities that present themselves for the schools to share, cooperate, etc. And what can we do that is in the best interest of kids,” said Hamm.

Much of the meeting focused on the problems that the school districts have and reasons that consolidation may very well be necessary.

Multiple districts said that finding and hiring quality teachers was indeed a problem. Some of those reasons include the fact that many teachers do not want to move to rural areas, others are too specialized and wouldn’t fit at a school where they’d have to teach multiple subjects. Another major reason is simply less and less people are going into the field of teaching.

Plus once the schools do have teachers, many are not put to efficient use as several of the districts spoke to having over 40% of their classes with 5 kids or less in them.

A new, bigger, consolidated school could potentially alleviate many of those issues and allow for students to be able to take more electives such as band or singing classes.

Creighton, Bloomfield and Osmond will meet in Bloomfield on July 22nd to discuss the next steps. Whether Wausa will a part of that meeting will be decided Monday.