The South Central Nebraska Unified District #5 voted at the September 2022 board meeting to not renew the current Unification Agreement. It is set to expire on Aug. 31, 2024.
In Jan. 2023, they hired me to oversee and help them navigate this de-unification and prepare both districts to be independent districts again, beginning with the 2024-25 school years. There are many things that need to be done to prepare for this.
Road Map-We have developed this Road Map for our work that must happen this school year. This Road Map is also meant to give everyone a visual that we can use to track our progress. As we are wrapping up our first quarter of the year, we are on track to accomplish the work we have before us. Here are a few updates on our progress:
SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMMING
Special Education is one of the most important aspects of our programming.
Our district is fortunate to have a robust program that serves our students through our Life Skills program, Achieve Program, Scale Program as well as support throughout the elementary, middle school and high school programs.
The challenge for us is to decide if each district will develop their own, independent programming or continue to share programming.
We developed four different models (labeled “Yellow”, “Gold”, “Rose”, and “Blue”) for the boards of education to review. With each model, we estimated the personnel costs and compared those to our current costs to see the potential financial impact for each district.
Cost was not the only factor to be considered. We also looked at the feasibility for each district to accomplish positive outcomes for each student as well.
See the below for the projected changes in cost:
• YELLOW:
L-N Change: $109,508. SC Change: $47,492. Total Change: $157,000.
• GOLD:
L-N Change: $120,365. SC Change: $96,767. Total Change: $217,132.
• ROSE:
L-N Change: $85,450. SC Change: $(-82,950). Total Change: $2,500.
• BLUE:
L-N Change: $97,928. SC Change: $(-37,928. Total Change: $60,000.
In two of the models, “Yellow” and “Gold”, each district would be 100 percent independent. The difference would be how they handle the leadership of the programs.
• “Yellow” model would have continued sharing the SPED Director position.
• “Gold” model would be with Sandy Creek hiring their own director and Lawrence- Nelson contracting with the Educational Service Unit #9 (Hastings) for the directorship.
Each of these options would have significantly higher costs for each district.
The next two options, “Rose” and “Blue”, are a combination of independent and shared programming.
• “Rose” model shares the directorship in a “80/20” model and shares the Achieve and the Scale programming.
• “Blue” model shares only the director (60/40 split) and the Scale program.
We reviewed each model with the special education staff of each district. Both staff recommended the “Blue” model for the boards of education to select. At the November meeting, the boards of education did select the “Blue” model for special education programming for each, beginning in the 2024-25 school year.
VEHICLE INVENTORY AND EQUIPMENT
Another major decision recently finalized was the determination of each district’s fleet of vehicles and equipment. We were fortunate that most items were distributed according to the Unification Agreement beforehand.
There were just some minor adjustments that needed to be made. As part of this discussion, it was emphasized that Lawrence-Nelson students would maintain full access to the career-focused “NCAPS” programming offered at Sandy Creek.
Over the next few months, we will focus our energy on deciding more technology related items, such as phone systems and accounting software systems.
We also need to turn our attention to district policies and finalizing negotiations with the staff as well!
As you can see, there is still a mountain of work that needs to be accomplished. We are continuing to work to ensure that each will be set up for success as independent districts in 2024-25.
