Members of the Madison Consolidated Schools board discussed the condition of the school district's buildings at a special meeting Thursday. Most of the focus was on E.O. Muncie Elementary School and Madison Consolidated High School.
Those two schools were rated the worst buildings in the school district in a study conducted before the school district asked the community to pass a $40 million building referendum. The referendum was soundly defeated in the May primary election.
Superintendent Ginger Studebaker-Bolinger said - as she did while campaigning for the referendum - that E.O. Muncie is in dire shape and that there isn't enough money available to repair the building.
The problem with trying to renovate the school, she said, is that the cost to complete needed work is estimated at $7.9 million.
"We're at a point where we just do not have enough money. We simply don't have enough money to maintain and repair our buildings," Bolinger said
School Board President Todd Bass said the board could spend all of its alloted capital projects fund on the school, and it would still take years to fund the repairs.
While Bolinger and the board stressed that nothing would happen before the start of the 2014-2015 school year, the board did discuss the possibility of closing E.O. Muncie in the future.
Moving fifth grade students to Madison Consolidated Junior High School or using Anderson Elementary School as a pre-school, kindergarten and first-grade facility were presented as hypothetical solutions.
Either option would potentially open up classroom space at other elementary schools for E.O. Muncie's second-, third- and fourth-grade classes.
The junior high and Anderson currently have the most space open for new students with 10 and 12 classrooms available, respectively.
If more students were moved to Anderson, some renovations would need to be made to the school's cafeteria, which was congested before it was closed. Bolinger also said that many of the open rooms at the junior high are used as intervention spaces and aren't always empty.
Bolinger said there are currently "no solutions for the high school. Not without more money."
Both the high school and E.O. Muncie face similar problems with their infrastructure, but there are no facilities that could house those students while repairs were made.
Andrew Garrett, who was in attendance at the meeting asked the board if it was possible to form volunteer groups of skilled laborers to make some of the repairs needed at the schools.
Director of Operations Mike Frazier said the idea is possible, but it's difficult to maintain those kind of volunteer groups.
Also at the meeting, the board tabled the transfer of Dupont Elementary School to Lancaster Township. The school district owns five connected parcels of land, and the former elementary school and adjacent parking lot are on three of those parcels.
School district attorney Mark Wynn is clarifying the agreement to transfer over those three parcels to the township. The school board will vote on the measure at their next meeting.
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