by justin strawser
MANDATA - Nearly 40 people attended the Line Mountain School Board meeting Tuesday night to voice concerns about the possible closure of Leck Kill and Dalmatia elementary schools.
There were many opinions, but most centered around early start times, young students mixing with older students and young student having to spend extended periods of time riding to and from school if the buildings close.
"There's an assumption that no one rides the bus now," board President Troy Laundenslager said, noting there are already students who spend an hour or longer on the bus. "It's going to happen. We're a big district and we're spread out."
The first option the school board is looking at is constructing an addition to the high school building in Mandata for grades fourth through sixth and sending all kindergarten through third grade pupils to Trevorton Elementary. The second option is building a separate building on the high school campus for kindergarten through second and sending third through sixth grades to Trevorton.
The potential savings of closing Leck Kill and Dalmatia would be $505,000, which includes operational and personnel costs.
In each case, with the closings at Dalmatia and Leck Kill, the district would then have only the Mandata and Trevorton campuses.
At this point, the school board is waiting for a bus study to determine the amount of time students will spend going to and from school.
Amy Michael, of Dalmatia, told the board there were no numbers given for repairing the schools rather than closing them down.
"We have three small schools. That's the ideal way to go," she said, noting that students feel safer in a smaller school.
The board had originally planned to renovate; the costs of doing so would have been $6.5 million compared to the plan of $8 million for a new school.
"The key is class sizes, not amount of schools," Superintendent Dave Campbell said. "I would rather cut operational costs than teachers."
Laudenslager was blunt with his reply to the crowd.
"If you want to talk tax dollars, there's no other way. We can continue throwing money at these building, but you have a chance to not raise taxes right now," he said.
He noted there was a "me-me-me" mentality to keeping small schools, but the reality was the majority of Line Mountain taxpayers had no students in school and would likely do anything to keep their taxes from increasing.
"It's not just one person. We're a big district," he said.
Sid Phillips presented a petition of 80 signatures in support of a one-campus school system, saying the board could not keep placing Band-Aids on the problems.
Lori Johnson, a school district resident, criticized the complainers at the meeting for not showing up at other meetings to see the larger picture.
"You elected this board. You trusted them to make decisions. Does anyone come listen at a July meeting? They've been discussing this for a year," she said.
The next meeting will be held Feb. 14, at which time the board expects to have the bus study.
In other business, the board adopted its 2012-13 preliminary budget in the amount of $17,896,339, but with a deficit of $1.4 million. There was no indication of raising taxes at this point, but the final passage is still months away.