Loyal, Greenwood school districts plan for April advisory referendum

By Cheyenne Thomas In their joint meeting on Dec. 11, the Loyal and Greenwood school boards met to discuss consolidation and what the next steps of investigating that process would be. Following a lengthy discussion, both boards voted to move forward with an advisory question on consolidation that will be asked of Greenwood and Loyal residents in April. The question to be asked of residents will be finalized before Jan. 20 in order for the question to appear on the April ballot.

In front of an audience of less than a dozen people, the two boards met in Greenwood to move forward on putting together an advisory referendum question that will appear on ballots on April 8. After speaking with several lawyers about if the advisory referendum question would be binding, Greenwood School District Administrator Joe Green said he had not found anything that would make an advisory question binding, but was still trying to reach out to the Department of Public Instruction to confirm that with certainty. With the advice given from the lawyers, the boards collectively agreed it should be safe to move forward with putting together a question for the ballot.

With the decision made to continue, discussion turned to asking about the timeline the districts would be looking at to consolidate. Green said he and Loyal District Administrator Chris Lindner had been looking at different calendar years that could be a potential start date for the 18-month consolidation process. The soonest the process could begin would be in December2025,withthetwoboardsadopting a resolution to consolidate. After a resolution is passed, Green said the public would have a two-month time frame to gather signatures for a petition if they wanted to have the decision be made by public referendum rather than by the school boards. If the amount of signatures collected for the petition amounted to 10% of the amount of voters who participated in the 2022 election, then a referendum would have to be held. Otherwise, the schools would be on track to consolidate in the 2027-28 school year.

The other timeline that the two administrators had discussed — and the one that was viewed more favorably — was a December 2026 start date for the process. As with the 2025 timeline, the boards would adopt a resolution to consolidate during a meeting that month, with a two-month window for residents to petition if they wanted to go to referendum instead. The two districts would then be consolidated in the 2028-29 school year.

“I think that 2026 would be the better year to go with,” said Lindner. “Our operational referendums end in the 2027-28 school year. We can get a fresh start from there.”

“That is something that we were talking about,” added Green. “We cannot operate on our own or together without an operational referendum. We won’t survive without one. Chris (Lindner) and I talked about how we only get a November election in the even years. If we were to start the process in 2025, there wouldn’t be an election in November of 2027. We wouldn’t be able to have an operational referendum in November of 2027. We would have to operate the first full year with whatever we have in our fund balance. Which, if nothing changes, we can do, but if we wait until 2026 then we will be consolidated in the 2028-29 school year and we can have a referendum in 2028 for an operational referendum as a consolidated district and if it passes, we would only have a few months that we would be operating from our fund balance. We would be able to run less on fund balance.”

The only downside to waiting for a longer period to begin the consolidation process, Green said, would be the continued need by both districts to fill staffing positions. And with teacher shortages, it is something that is becoming harder and harder to do.

“We have no intent to cut positions,” said Green. “But the longer we wait to consolidate, the longer that we will have to try to fill positions in both districts. It’s been hard to find teachers and we’re trying to share, but the longer we kick that can down the road, the longer it will take to capture any sort of savings for our two districts.”

After discussing the timeline, the discussion moved to what sort of question should be put on the ballot. Loyal board member Matt Kubista asked if the question would include information about what city would be the location of a high school, as there are voters who will be voting with those concerns in mind. By keeping a referendum question vague, voters are not being completely informed about what the intended future of the two districts would look like, he said. Referendum,

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“There are some people who are going to say, ‘I don’t want a high school in Loyal,’” he said. “Why are we putting this question on the ballot when we are not saying which school is going to have the high school?”

Whilethedifferentmembersoftheboardandadministrators agreed that no one wants to see the loss of a high school in either city, they pointed out that asking the question this way has always caused conversations on consolidation to fail. For decades, the question has come up and each time, the schools tried to answer the question on the high school location before asking the public about what they wanted. They have never thought about looking at both communities already operating as one unit.

“In the past, we have looked at the question as Greenwood versus Loyal, pitting one community against another,” said Green. “By focusing on both districts together, as one, it gives us a different perspective on this question than we have tried before. If we continue to do things the exact same way that we have been doing things for the last 60 years, we’re just going to continue to go back and forth. We need to be able to move forward with this conversation and look at how things will work together. This needs to be looked at with how the schools will be together as one district. Not as Greenwood versus Loyal. We need to look at what is going to give our kids the best education.”

“The education of our kids is not going to change based on what building the high school is in,” added Eliza Ruzic, Greenwood board member.

“To me, I am voting on what is the best thing for the school,” added fellow Greenwood board member Luke Smith. “I’m not voting for the city council or for the businesses. I’m voting for our kids and their future. That’s what this is about.”

Declining enrollment numbers and rising costs of taxes are also things that were talked about as reasons to consider the change of strategy with regards to a consolidation question. If nothing is done at this point, the members of the board expressed concern that things would only continue to get worse for the districts and community.

“Enrollment is not going up,” said Green. “If all a community needed to thrive was a high school, then why is everyone’s enrollments continuing to go down? No one’s enrollments are going up. We’re better off trying to build something together than trying to do this on our own. I don’t know yet what that will look like, but we have to try.”

“No one wants a community to dry up,” said Lindner. “But tax bills are still high and referendums are only asking for more and more money. It’s not getting any cheaper. We need to try to do more stuff together.”

“At some point, a school referendum may not pass,” added Loyal member Tom Odeen. “If it doesn’t pass, we’re going to end up having to make cuts. But at a certain point, you can’t cut positions anymore. Expenses have to be cut.”

Even a few community members present at the meeting spoke in favor of the change in perspective on the referendum question.

“When my grandparents were in school, there were 80 kids graduating in a class,” said Nick Stieglitz. “When I graduated, there were 40 to 50 kids. Now, there’s around 20 that graduate each year. I agree that we need to quit taking sides. It will never work if it’s always us versus them. No one wants to lose their high school, but right now we’re being given a choice on how we want our communities to move forward. Because if the state comes in, they will be the ones deciding where your kids go. Are we going to wait until our class sizes have six to eight kids? Maybe then we’ll do something?”

The two boards both passed motions to go to referendum in April, asking residents a polished version of the question, “Do you support consolidation between the Greenwood and Loyal school districts?” The question would be finalized and sent to board approval in January and would be answered in a simple yes/no format. The referendum would be advisory only, meaning the districts would not be bound to the outcome of the vote.