MCCSC school board votes to merge Childs and Templeton elementary schools

Monroe County Community School Corp. will proceed with a plan to merge Childs and Templeton elementary schools for the 2025-2026 school year in an attempt to balance socioeconomic disparities across the school district.

MCCSC board members voted in favor of the merger proposal, 6-0-1, during the April 23 meeting, with board member Ross Grimes abstaining.

Grimes announced he would abstain prior to the vote, explaining he was concerned about the timing of the merger combined with a new interim superintendent starting in July, as well as other logistical complications caused by the merger.

The board also moved to appoint Markay Winston as interim superintendent. Winston currently serves as the deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction at MCCSC.

“The timeframe scares me,” Grimes said. “There’s start time issues, plus transportation, and with a new administration coming in, I think that’s what the concern is there.”

Superintendent Jeff Hauswald and the school board agreed to separate in March. Hauswald will leave at the end of the school year.

Incoming interim superintendent Winston will work with the MCCSC administration and the Monroe County Education Association (the MCCSC teacher’s union), along with public input, to create a plan for the merger before Dec. 31, 2024.

Hauswald's original proposal for the merger, presented in December, recommended Childs Elementary School host pre-K through second grade and Templeton host third grade through sixth grade. Board members said during listening sessions about the merger and redistricting that they also may consider moving sixth grade into middle school in the future.

Public comment during the April board meeting focused on the logistical questions of the merger that remain unanswered, including transportation between schools and support for children with disabilities. Many also spoke of the eroded trust between the public and the school board that the merger has caused, with some noting that board members had discussed publishing further research and FAQ pages for families during previous listening sessions about the merger.

“If you were honest with yourself and with your constituents, you would acknowledge you were always going to vote for this merger,” said Aileen Wenzel, a parent at Childs Elementary. “How will you accomplish all of this in six months, when you can’t even publish a single web page in five months?”

Superintendent Hauswald gives presentation on Childs-Templeton merger

Prior to the vote, Hauswald presented a 14-question FAQ, answering board-submitted questions about the merger. The presentation lasted approximately nine minutes. A few key responses to the questions are as follows:

On transportation: Hauswald said MCCSC would provide transportation for families with “transportation barriers” caused by the merger, saying school-to-school shuttles will “likely exist” and noting that MCCSC provides two hours of extended day opportunities at its elementary schools.

On Title 1 funding: Hauswald said MCCSC’s district-wide Title 1 funding would not be affected, as funding is determined at the district level. However, he noted the amount of funding dispersed to each school could change based on free/reduced lunch enrollment, though these counts would be delayed until the 2026-27 school year. He said Templeton would likely receive less Title 1 funding and Childs would likely begin receiving Title 1 funding. Childs currently receives no Title 1 funding.

On students with disabilities: Hauswald said “most impacts to students with disabilities are seen as positive,” including socializing with a diverse group of students. He said negative impacts, including transition difficulties, will be addressed through individual student learning plans and case conferences that currently exist at Rogers and Binford elementary schools. Hauswald also said additional paraprofessional staff (instructional aides who help students with disabilities) may be allocated to schools based on their size, poverty level and individualized special education needs.

Board members voice support for merger before the vote

MCCSC Board President April Hennessey said before the vote that she’s been “undecided from the start” on the merger, especially as discussions of a full redistricting emerged.

However, Hennessey said she believed the merger would help students who have to transition schools, since entire classrooms would transfer together, rather than a handful of individual students who would change schools by redistricting.

“In that model, you actually have an entirely new culture that has to be created, because you now have all of the students in the schools together, not handfuls swapped between the two,” Hennessey said. “A redistricting in this way could be potentially harmful to the students we’re most concerned about, and I think a merger could mitigate some of that.”

Board member Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer voiced her support for the merger prior to the vote, saying that while she believed the merger would be disruptive, it was important work toward achieving equity in balancing socioeconomic status of students at MCCSC.

“It hurts me to disrupt people, and to hurt people I care about,” Fuentes-Rohwer said. “But I do believe that this is the important work of creating an environment that is going to benefit all children.”

Board member Erin Cooperman, who voted in support of the merger, said she viewed the vote as the start of a process to merge schools that could now become more democratic, involving input from community members and experts in the local and external community.

“I see this proposal, this resolution, as a request to start that very process,” Cooperman said. “I think that it’s the start of a transparent, participatory process that engages experts.”

Hennessey echoed these comments, saying she viewed the vote as the board “handing off the baton” to the administration to begin examining the merger process and further involve community stakeholders. She noted that the board was limited in its ability to receive participatory public comment in a way the administration at large is not.

“When the board meets, we must meet in a particular way, which means we cannot engage the public in a kind of participatory way that we would like to see happen,” Hennessey said. “The administration can begin those conversations in a new sort of different way, along the road to implementation.”

Hennessey said the merger proposal will now move to the administration cabinet, who will work with incoming superintendent Winston to create a “task list” for the merger and engage a consultant. Hennessey mentioned facilities report and discussions with the MCEA as potential actions she anticipated the administration would take.

Hennessey said the community could still provide input on the merger through public comment during future school board meetings and by emailing comments@mccsc.edu.

“And then I anticipate that as this process begins to move forward, and there are pieces and parts of the plan that need to have comment or input, that that will be set up through the administration for the community to have those conversations.”

The next MCCSC school board meeting will be at 6 p.m. May 21 at the MCCSC Co-Lab, 553 E. Miller Drive.

Reach Brian Rosenzweig at brian@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: MCCSC school board votes to merge Childs-Templeton elementary schools