The $4.1 million school budget shortfall fueled a free flowing discussion by Douglas County School District trustees on Dec. 3 about a half-dozen possible school consolidations.
Trustees were pitching ideas when Lake trustee Erinn Miller suggested the possibility of busing Carson Valley students to Zephyr Cove Elementary while pointing out it’s not just student population but those in certain grades.
Zephyr Cove Elementary and Whittell High School serve 293 students at Lake Tahoe. The two schools have a capacity of 978 students according to the Douglas County School District.
Trustees discussed potentially consolidating Meneley and Scarselli elementary schools in the Ranchos, which would bring one of the schools up to capacity. Another possibility was merging Jacks Valley and Piñon Hills elementary schools.
“I would never suggest sending kids up to the Lake,” Trustee Marcus Zinke said. “I would rather suggest sending kids from the Lake down to the Valley or making Zephyr Cove and George Whittell a K-12.”
He cited the 2008 closure of Kingsbury Middle School, which took nearly a decade to sell, bringing in $3.25 million. There are questions whether the district could sell either of the other Lake schools as they were donated as schools by the Whittell Estate.
Board President Yvonne Wagstaff asked whether the district could sell the historic Minden school on Mono Avenue that has served as its offices for decades. The school was evacuated due to a rodent and bat infestation.
“If we consolidate schools what are we going to do with the buildings?” she asked. “We have to have those conversations.”
School Superintendent Frankie Alvarado said he would raise the question with the town of Minden, which is negotiating to take over the dog park behind the school.
Even if the schools were closed and sold quickly, the money would go to the building and sites fund, which still has some of the Kingsbury money in it.
Trustee Melinda Gneiting asked whether that could be put in the district’s investment account, where the interest could be used to support the schools.
Zinke argued that consolidating some schools would make sense even if the district wasn’t facing the budget crisis but that it’s too early to make that call.
“We can’t make decisions on consolidating schools without information about how many positions that would save and the unintended consequences of how many kids we’re going to lose,” he said. “We don’t have a crystal ball for that. That’s significantly more convoluted than figuring out about the staff requirements for the number of students and the matrix that you all have. Even if doing that was enough savings to maintain there are still schools that make sense to combine.”
He advocated for otherwise making choices that keep conditions as close as possible to what they are now until more information is available.
Alvarado said district administration won’t place any actions before the board until trustees feel ready to decide.
“We’ll do the analysis and cost savings first before you even have to consider a decision,” he said.
Trustee David Burns said that there are some tough decisions ahead of the school board.
“We have to flat out look at everything,” he said. “We’re looking at four schools running half or less than half and we can’t afford that.”
Even closing elementary schools wouldn’t make much of a dent in the immediate budget deficit or the possible $5 million deficit next year, which the district is under a state deadline to fix.
Should the district fail to come up with a plan, it’s possible the state could take over its finances.
Both the historic Minden School and the Heritage Building at Gardnerville Elementary School are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Heritage Building is currently serving as district offices and could be the new home of ASPIRE high school in the spring after Western Nevada College takes over the Bently Campus for a new nursing program.
Another historic property owned by the school district is the former Douglas County High School, which is leased to the Douglas County Historical Society and is the home of the Carson Valley Museum & Cultural Center.