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Last Updated: Aug 27, 2010 - 8:27 AM |
The approval of the merger plans between the Rising City and Shelby School districts have been put on hold as the Rising City School Board tabled the decision at their last board meeting on August 12 .
At the meeting a group of landowners petitioned the Rising City School Board to transfer their land to the David City Public School District. A total of 177 individual parcels, valued at nearly 41 million were petitioned to be moved.
When it became apparent several years ago that the Rising City School was going to have to either merge or dissolve the district, they first explored the option of joining David City. A little later on, they explored the option of joining with the Shelby School District. The board was split on which direction to pursue. They voted 3-3 to go with David City. They voted 3-3 to merge with Shelby. Since the board was split, they decided to go to the district patrons with a straw vote poll to see with whom the patrons wished to merge. The straw poll was in favor of Shelby and in March, the Rising City board voted to merge with Shelby.
In the straw poll, only patrons of the district were polled. Landowners felt they should have been able to participate in the poll since they are the ones paying taxes for the school district. Shelby’s current levy of $1.05 is $.13 more than David City’s levy of $.92.
It is the Rising City board’s decision alone as to whether or not to accept or reject these land transfer petitions. Their decision is final, there can be no appeal.
At the meeting the board tabled the decision on the land transfers and the merger. They wanted more information from the state reorganization board. One of the options they were interested in exploring was that of dissolving the district.
According to Rising City Interim Superintendent, Deryl Nissen, the board has two options, (1) Pursue the merger with Shelby or (2) Dissolve the district.
Nissen has talked to the state reorganization committee and feels that it would be difficult to dissolve the district. He felt that it would leave the building and staff vulnerable.
“In respect to our employees, we need to move forward”, says Nissen. “The longer we delay, the longer our staff is in limbo.”
The board has invested in many improvements to the school building this year, making it more attractive for a middle school in the merger. In the merger plans, Shelby has agreed to use the building for a minimum of five years.
The Rising City and Shelby School Boards were hoping to finalize the merger and take the petition to the State Committee for the Reorganization Committee in Lincoln on September 24. At this time, that probably won’t happen as Rising City’s next meeting is a special session to be held on Aug. 30, but at this point, the merger in not on the agenda and their next regular board meeting isn’t until September 20.
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