Local News - Administrators re-evaluate deal to share schools
By ROB SPAHR, Staff Writer | Posted: Friday, November 20, 2009 | 1 comment
MULLICA TOWNSHIP - The Mullica Township and Washington Township school districts entered into a three-year shared-services agreement in 2007, and now each district is trying to decide whether it is something worth continuing.
Under the terms of the agreement, which expires in June, the Washington Township School District pays the neighboring Mullica Township School District an annual stipend for the use of upper-level administrators, including the superintendent, principal and business administrator at its Green Bank School. The district also pays Mullica for its child study team and cafeteria services....Continue Reading
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Washington Township paid about $196,500 to have those services in-house during the 2006-07 school year, according to Superintendent Richard Goldberg. The following year, Goldberg said, the district paid Mullica Township just $147,500 to provide for them and has continued to save about $50,000 every year since.
The Mullica Township School District clears $100,000 of that annual payment after having to pay for the additional personnel and stipends for the extra duties required by its staff, Goldberg said.
Board of Education representatives from each district are currently negotiating to determine if that agreement will move forward beyond this school year.
But after some early skepticism from some parents that sharing these services would dilute the services provided to their children, representatives from each school district claim the experiment has been an overwhelming success.
Jeanne Fox-Ford, the president of the Washington Township Board of Education, said she feels her district has saved about $100,000 per year considering all of the extra benefits the agreement has provided to its students.
Students at the Green Bank School now have access to formal musical, technology, art and foreign language instruction.
"We had some teachers who would voluntarily incorporate it into their classes in the past, but it wasn't anything formal," Fox-Ford said. "Now our students get that instruction every week."
Fox-Ford said having access this kind of ancillary instruction better prepares children for the future.
"I think it is incredibly important for our kids," she said. "Even though we only have a handful of kids in each grade level - we send only about a dozen kids on to high school each year - I don't want those kids to feel like they weren't afforded every opportunity or to feel like they are behind all of their peers who have receivedthat kind of instruction for years."
Goldberg admitted that the workload can be demanding at times for the administrators because they have to do everything twice: Two board meetings, two budgets and two schools for which to file all the necessary paperwork to the county and state.
"If the state truly believes in shared services, they should find a way to streamline some of that more," Goldberg said.
But aside from that, Goldberg said the shared-services agreement has provided students of both districts with a better education.
"Our teachers attend workshops together and have shared their ideas and techniques with each other," Goldberg said. "Teachers from each school have learned things from teachers at the other, and what they learned spills over to a better education for our students."
Goldberg said both school districts have been able to cut the costs of field trips, by combining some trips and using Washington Township's school bus for nearby excursions. And even though another agreement has not been finalized, the districts are already discussing the possibility of combining more after-school activities and functions in the future.
Fox-Ford said that she doesn't expect the partnership to end in June.
"Everyone over there are the utmost professionals. They are wonderful people and I'm glad to be able to work with them," Fox-Ford said of Mullica Township's administrators. "As far as choosing a dancing partner, Mullica has been pretty close to perfect."
Contact Robert Spahr:
609-272-7283
Posted in Atlantic on Friday, November 20, 2009 2:10 am
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