The Greene County and Paton-Churdan School Districts have agreed on a new sharing agreement.
The new two year agreement involves both academics and athletics. For academics, P-C has agreed to increase their funding from 90 to 95-percent of the state’s per pupil funding of $6,700 per student for general courses and will pay 100-percent state funding rate for Career and Technical Education (CTE) and upper level math and science courses. As for athletics, P-C will pay $597 per student per sport. The current sports that are shared will remain shared, which include: cross country, wrestling, football, golf, soccer, baseball and softball.
Greene County Schools Superintendent Tim Christensen explains that P-C currently pays a much lower rate for their students to share sports with Greene County.
“One of the meetings we were kind of talking, they kind of calculated that out, based on the number of students (43) they had in athletics to be about $143 per student. As we were negotiating I looked at our expenditures and what it cost us per student (per athlete) for our sports, that’s where the $597 figure came in.”
P-C Superintendent Kreg Lensch released a statement on the new agreement saying that he appreciated the process and cooperation of both districts in reaching an agreement that was “fair for both districts and I feel we achieved that.” As for P-C’s perspective, Lensch felt they have a lot of positives including: increasing enrollment and participation numbers, and having the opportunity to “take courses through Greene County Schools is just another positive for us.”
Another point of discussion by the Greene County School Board was student scheduling difficulties. It was mentioned by administration that it was difficult to schedule students for their classes, while also taking into consideration Paton-Churdan students. When the Greene County School Board approved the agreement earlier this week it passed six to one, with Board member Katherine Wilson being the one “no” vote. P-C School Board approved the agreement at their regular meeting earlier this month.