While some Blairsville-Saltsburg school board members are actively seeking to promote discussions to merge their district with the Homer Center School District, the question is how receptive Homer Center would be to the proposal, especially after the Blairsville-Saltsburg board decided against formally pursuing a merger?
Homer Center Superintendent Dr. Charles Koren yesterday responded to the posting of the Blairsville-Saltsburg agenda with a written statement, saying his district has had no formal meetings, nor initiated any inquiries on the matter. Koren says Homer Center understands that there are “opportunities and options” and the school board takes very seriously its responsibility to have an open mind on actions that would benefit the community’s children.
In Dr. Koren’s words, “…the Homer-Center School Board may begin to discuss and explore all options and will listen to the communities of Homer City Borough and Center Township to gather information, hear concerns and discuss thoughts that would bring about continuous improvement in their school district.” He concluded, “Neither a definitive statement nor action is appropriate at this time.”
Koren’s statement was prepared before the Blairsville-Saltsburg board rejected the idea of opening discussions. There is a Buildings & Grounds Committee meeting tonight for the Homer Center board, at which the issue will not likely come up. The next full board meeting is a planning session scheduled for Thursday, May 3rd.
Dr. Charles Koren’s statement on behalf of the Homer Center School District:
On Monday, April 23, 2018, the Blairsville-Saltsburg School Board Agenda became public through the action of being posted to the web site. An item pertaining to a possibility of a merger had been listed as an agenda item for the scheduled meeting.
Homer-Center School Board has had no formal meetings nor had initiated any inquiries toward a potential merger with the Blairsville-Saltsburg School District. Homer-Center understands that such opportunities and options do exist and believe that having an open mind to how a community might take actions to benefit children in their school happens to be a responsibility that Board Members take very seriously at all times.
A year ago, the State House of Representatives released a commissioned report looking at future possibilities as to what actions some selected school districts might take in order to think ‘outside the box’ due to the ever increasing burden of providing a quality education for their children who attend their community schools. Mentioned in that report had been the potential of communities to study and evaluate possibilities of consolidation of some school districts that happen to be contiguous. Sharing services along with potential consolidations happen to be topics that deserve periodic conversation among school and community leaders.
With this action item coming to the B-SSD Board agenda, the Homer-Center School Board may begin to discuss and explore all options and will listen to the communities of Homer City Borough and Center Township to gather information, hear concerns and discuss thoughts that would bring about continuous improvement in their school district. Potential always exists for the provision of increased opportunities for students, sharing services and possibly remaining taxpayer friendly while involved in the process. Multiple entities will have to be involved and after the gathering of information, a direction may be determined. Neither a definitive statement nor action is appropriate at this time. All Indiana County school districts have the ability to think creatively when discussing future educational opportunities.
