A small group discussed the failed referendum by Wawasee School Corporation with school finance director, James Flecker, shown on the right, following a special public meeting Thursday, Nov. 5. From left are Chris Cotton; Vince Beasley, director of the career tech education program, Patrick Tranter and Sandy Angel. In back is Jennifer Phillips, director of special services.

By Deb Patterson
InkFreeNews

SYRACUSE — Poor communication was repeated numerous times regarding the defeated Wawasee Community School Corporation’s referendum in a discussion between school officials and patrons. The meeting was held following a special school board meeting Thursday evening, Nov. 5, lasting almost an hour.

The referendum was handily defeated in Tuesday’s election.

Patrick Tranter, Sandy Angel and Chris Cotton appeared to speak freely with James Flecker, corporation finance director, Dr. Steve Troyer, assistant superintendent, and Vince Beasley, director of the Pathways Cooperative. The group met after Flecker offered to meet and discuss concerns Tranter wanted to bring up during the public meeting.

Tranter questioned numerous areas but mainly focused on how the referendum was handled including how all the information focused on the CTE program and not safety and student achievement. He also brought up points of apathy by the public in attending school board meetings, overall lack of communication, easy accessibility of information and how embarrassed he is to say he graduated from Wawasee due to state rankings on test scores.

Focusing on the referendum, Tranter asked, “When was any of that put into a public notice? I’ve looked high and low, not one public notice gave anybody any kind of indication what this is all about.” He indicated many people felt the board was attempting to sneak the tax increase through. “Nobody even knew what the yes signs meant. As soon as everybody started finding out, they said no way … we had no clue… .”

Tranter also suggested it appeared as if the school corporation was attempting to make up the $2 million deficit from last year’s budget.

Most of Tranter’s questions and comments were answered by Flecker, who expressed the referendum was for safety, CTE and student achievement. Flecker stated this was something school officials started looking at when taking a look at changing the vision and mission statement for a strategic plan.

While Flecker agreed the presentation of the referendum was done incorrectly, he added the spread of the vote against had “come out in such a way, the community is not, they were not behind it.” Additionally, regarding promotion of the CTE program to the public was “what we were told they would be most interested in.” He was referring to the consultant hired by the corporation from Indianapolis.

“He had no clue about our town,” Tranter added. Flecker admitted, “The things you’re saying, we’ve had to learn the hard way.”

He also stated he never wanted to do the referendum again, ever. But he asked Tranter if the referendum would have been marketed and communicated differently and they asked for 14 or even 10 cents, “do you feel it would have been different?”

“Any other year but this year? Yes,” said Tranter. He noted the struggle of area businesses having to close and reduce employees. “It would have been a lot more successful if marketed right … really people understood it and it was not this year … successful to pass and I might have been behind it. It would be totally different.”

Flecker admitted he had learned people only heard about the information two to three weeks before the election and they (school corporation) didn’t have the message out well enough.

Addressing the test scores, he stated, “We should be a top tier school in the state … We want to be the best school corporation … no reason why we can’t be the best. We have tremendous resources here … We have some of the best teachers in our school comparable to any other schools.”

Before the meeting ended, it was noted the referendum could be brought up in the future, but school officials will continue to look at various ways to improve student achievement, possibly with more community involvement. ”We didn’t do this the best way we could.”

Three of the five school board members remained for the informal meeting but did not participate in the discussion.