The Oregon-Davis School Board is being asked to step up its recruitment and retention efforts. During Monday’s discussion about a proposed high school administrative restructuring, several community members felt the school corporation needed a long-term strategy for addressing ongoing enrollment decline.
Parent Lee Nagai was among the most vocal. “This sounds terribly harsh, but if you as board members aren’t going to tackle this and lead on this, you need to resign,” he said. “This is the school system. I went to school here. My parents went to school here. Both my grandparents were on this board. This is killing me.”
For his part, Nagai said he’s been following a Knox school bus around Hamlet, and found that it picks up 25 kids just within the town. Nagai also said that when he served on the O-D School Board, he “personally recruited” six students.
Board Member Kyle Hinds said he wants to explore offering bus transportation to the Knox area, but felt that O-D also needs something to attract students. “Whether we can partner with a Gilsinger’s or a company to utilize the bus barn so we could push out certified ag technicians or we partner with someone else, there’s got to be some industry that needs something, if students could come out of here with a jump start towards a union electrician job or something,” he said. “We need the superintendent reaching out to as many people as we can, finding some partnerships, some grants, something that we can do here that’s going to draw kids in.”
Several of those in attendance Monday felt the addition of a girls high school soccer team should be a big draw for Oregon-Davis, but noted that students have to go elsewhere to play football and other sports.
Some suggested that the best way to address recruitment and retention would be to hire an outside consultant who specializes in those matters. But Board President Chris Lawrence doubted it would help. “We’ve reached out to a couple different people,” Lawrence said, “and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, you can send us money. You can send us money and hire us, but we’ll tell you, you have a housing shortage and the time zone.’ They said, ‘Hire us. Go ahead and pay us, but we can tell you right now, Oregon and Davis townships in Starke County have a housing problem.’ We don’t have houses.” The apparently-low birth rate throughout the surrounding region was also cited as a challenge.
Others felt recruitment and retention needs to start with parents. They noted that negative perceptions can spread quickly on Facebook, and they challenged parents to share the positive things about the school corporation online.
Still, Board Member Hinds assured those in attendance that the school board will be discussing recruitment in the next couple weeks. “I have pushed hard for a workshop,” he said. “It’s going to be financial, and it’s going to be enrollment-driven. I think the date is scheduled, July 10. I’ve sent out numerous emails. We’re having it. We have to have something here to sell that people want.”
The work session will also feature a facilities tour and discussions about the corporation’s strategic plan. It will be held July 10 at 6:00 p.m.
