SOUTH WAYNE - At a public meeting Monday, a resolution to allow the Black Hawk School District to sell its middle school building in Gratiot was defeated 57-39.
The district will still close the school at the end of this semester, with a predicted savings of $147,500 annually. The closure is part of a plan to shave more than $375,000 from the district budget.
About 100 people attended the meeting, filling the commons of the high school. Above their heads hung a brightly colored banner that reads, "We are a school where staff and students excel, parents and community care."
An emotional public hearing preceded the vote and dissolved at one point into several people shouting over each other. The most vocal spoke against the sale of the building and against the permanent closure of the school, but comments from both sides drew clapping.
Gratiot and South Wayne had separate school districts until the mid-1960s, when they combined to form Black Hawk. Several at the meeting expressed frustration that the closure unduly shoulders the people of Gratiot, a smaller town eight miles to the west, with a loss of revenue and loss of identity from its only school - amounting to "a nail in our coffin," as one person from Gratiot put it.
Gratiot resident Chuck Herbst got a round of applause after he suggested the administration should have explored other budget-saving options, such as negotiating salaries with employees.
"We're talking nickels and dimes," another man said.
"We are," superintendent Willy Chambers agreed. But it has come to this, he added, as the state squeezes funding to public schools. Black Hawk teachers already make less than teachers in other districts, he said.
The impending closing has so far not affected open enrollment. As of Monday morning, Chambers said three students had applied to enter the district and four students, all from areas east of South Wayne, had applied to leave.
Since 2007, voters in the Black Hawk district have voted against three of four school referendums asking for more money. The threat to close the Gratiot school has been openly discussed for years, but it never went to voters in terms so bald on the ballot.
District board president Kerry Holland said he thought the flare-up over the closing would change the way the board handles referenda in the future.
Now, he said, the board will be more likely to ask for money piecemeal, on a project-by-project basis, instead of asking for a one-time increase to the general operating budget.
Next year a bus will pick up students in Gratiot in the parking lot across from the closed school to take them to South Wayne. An attempt has been made in the schedule to separate middle and high school students, Chambers said, "but they'll be passing each other in the hall."
The future of the soon-to-be-former middle school is still murky. The land underneath it belongs to the Village of Gratiot. Since the district didn't get permission from voters to negotiate the sale of the building, Holland says it will be used for storage and minimally heated and cooled for upkeep purposes.
Insurance on the empty building will hike to about $8,500, according to district estimates, about $1,000 more than the current rate for an occupied school.
The option to sell the building or reopen it as a school could go up again for a vote as early as next year.
The district will still close the school at the end of this semester, with a predicted savings of $147,500 annually. The closure is part of a plan to shave more than $375,000 from the district budget.
About 100 people attended the meeting, filling the commons of the high school. Above their heads hung a brightly colored banner that reads, "We are a school where staff and students excel, parents and community care."
An emotional public hearing preceded the vote and dissolved at one point into several people shouting over each other. The most vocal spoke against the sale of the building and against the permanent closure of the school, but comments from both sides drew clapping.
Gratiot and South Wayne had separate school districts until the mid-1960s, when they combined to form Black Hawk. Several at the meeting expressed frustration that the closure unduly shoulders the people of Gratiot, a smaller town eight miles to the west, with a loss of revenue and loss of identity from its only school - amounting to "a nail in our coffin," as one person from Gratiot put it.
Gratiot resident Chuck Herbst got a round of applause after he suggested the administration should have explored other budget-saving options, such as negotiating salaries with employees.
"We're talking nickels and dimes," another man said.
"We are," superintendent Willy Chambers agreed. But it has come to this, he added, as the state squeezes funding to public schools. Black Hawk teachers already make less than teachers in other districts, he said.
The impending closing has so far not affected open enrollment. As of Monday morning, Chambers said three students had applied to enter the district and four students, all from areas east of South Wayne, had applied to leave.
Since 2007, voters in the Black Hawk district have voted against three of four school referendums asking for more money. The threat to close the Gratiot school has been openly discussed for years, but it never went to voters in terms so bald on the ballot.
District board president Kerry Holland said he thought the flare-up over the closing would change the way the board handles referenda in the future.
Now, he said, the board will be more likely to ask for money piecemeal, on a project-by-project basis, instead of asking for a one-time increase to the general operating budget.
Next year a bus will pick up students in Gratiot in the parking lot across from the closed school to take them to South Wayne. An attempt has been made in the schedule to separate middle and high school students, Chambers said, "but they'll be passing each other in the hall."
The future of the soon-to-be-former middle school is still murky. The land underneath it belongs to the Village of Gratiot. Since the district didn't get permission from voters to negotiate the sale of the building, Holland says it will be used for storage and minimally heated and cooled for upkeep purposes.
Insurance on the empty building will hike to about $8,500, according to district estimates, about $1,000 more than the current rate for an occupied school.
The option to sell the building or reopen it as a school could go up again for a vote as early as next year.