At Paton-Churdan’s School Board meeting on Wednesday, the Board decided to stay with Jefferson-Scranton for its partial day sharing agreement.

Rob Olsen, shared superintendent with Glidden-Ralston, talks about some of the details of how the agreement will be set up.

“They agreed to an on-going, renewable contract with either district having the option to notify the other by November 1st if they wish to terminate the agreement one way or another.”

He states that since the new agreement is “on-going” that means the Paton-Churdan district doesn’t have to reapply with Jefferson-Scranton, which will become Greene County next year, but instead gives them the option to terminate the contract before the beginning of the following school year.  The two past contracts have each been five-years in length.

Olsen comments that at Paton-Churdan, they are proud of the types of programs they can offer their kids and they didn’t want to stop their partnership with Jefferson-Scranton.

“We just didn’t want to jeopardize all the great things that we have going on and the continued success we’re seeing year after year with increased enrollment and those types of things, with the possibility that if we were to make a different choice that maybe others would choose to not continue to go to school at Paton-Churdan.  So, at this point with so many unknowns, we felt like what was best for the district as a whole, at this points in time, was to continue to do our partial day sharing with Jefferson-Scranton.”

He points out that Jefferson-Scranton will be charging Paton-Churdan 90% of the state’s funding for providing academic programs with their school system and that the proposal has to be approved by the Jefferson-Scranton School Board which will meet on Monday next week.

Jefferson-Scranton and East Greene Shared Superintendent Tim Christensen says he’s looking forward to continue the partnership with Paton-Churdan.