Southeast Nebraska Consolidated approves plan for merger

Plans are moving forward as the Humboldt Table Rock Steinauer School District and the Southeast Nebraska Consolidated School District plan to merge by Jan. 1.

The Southeast Nebraska Consolidated School District and the Humboldt Table Rock Steinauer Enlarged School District have put together an agreement to merge the two bordering school districts effective Jan. 1, Superintendent Clint Kimbrough said.

The Southeast Nebraska Consolidated District, which includes the towns of Stella, Shubert, Barada and Nemaha, approved the agreement Thursday night, Southeast Nebraska Consolidated Superintendent Michael Montgomery said.

The Humboldt Table Rock Steinauer School District is expected to approve the agreement in the next few weeks, Kimbrough said.

The agreement will be sent on to the Nebraska Department of Education State Reorganization Committee on Oct. 10 for its approval, he said.

The merger, which will create the largest district by area in Nebraska, is a result of dropping enrollment at Southeast Nebraska Consolidated School District caused by LB219 that allows free holding petitions, Montgomery said.

Free holding is the process by which a landowner, under certain circumstances, petitions to have his or her land transferred to a contiguous school district. Those circumstances include situations in which the school district from which the land would be transferred:

n has had an average daily membership in grades 9-12 of less than 60 for the two consecutive school years immediately preceding the filing of the petition;

n has voted to exceed the maximum levy and the vote is effective for the school fiscal year in which the petition is filed or for the following school fiscal year;

n has a high school within 15 miles on a maintained public highway or maintained public road of another high school; and

n is not a member of a learning community.

Southeast Nebraska Consolidated fit into those circumstances with a high school student body of less than 60 and thus far has lost about 40 percent of its student body because of free holding petitions, Montgomery said. Last January, the school district began conducting meetings with district patrons, Montgomery said.

“We knew the free holding was going to start,” he said. “There was no way to stop it.”

“It was also the best way to ensure that our teaching staff, those that wanted it, would have a job.”

Southeast began talking with HTRS after district patrons expressed that would be the first choice of school district to merge with, Kimbrough said. HTRS was willing to merge.

“(The HTRS School Board) sees what’s happening to the district and they want to stop the bleeding,” Kimbrough said.

Once the merger is officially approved, it will go into effect Jan. 1, Kimbrough said. But, nothing will change this school year.

“We’re going to continue to educate our kids at their current sites right now,” he said.

All of the schools will operate as normal and on separate budgets, Montgomery and Kimbrough said.

However, after the school year is completed, changes will then be made as they figure out how they will operate the district and serve all of the students, Kimbrough said. There are no specific details of those changes at this time.

For the next four years, the district school board will contain nine members, Kimbrough said. Six members will represent the HTRS district and three will be from Southeast Nebraska. After four years, the board will shrink back to six members.