Saint Joseph school board reopens Plan E after staff and special-education capacity concerns; schedules Nov. 12 session

Trustees on the Saint Joseph Board of Education spent most of a Nov. 8 work session probing the district's "Plan E" for reorganizing schools and cutting costs, concluding that Plan E may not deliver the staffing and programmatic capacity needed — particularly for middle-school special-education services — and agreeing to reconvene on Nov. 12 to consider alternative two-high-school plans.

Dr. McGinnis (district administration) opened the discussion by reviewing Plan E's premise and consultant input from Jeff Leek. Administration's financial summary showed Plan E would produce roughly $608,000 in staffing-related savings in the first full year (modeled using attrition) and additional potential savings the following year; staff emphasized the figures assume hiring freezes and retirements rather than immediate layoffs.

The nut of the trustees' concerns was special education. Doctor Anderson, the district's special-education lead, told the board that special education currently comprises 11.9% of the district's students (1,356 in the most recent Dec. 1 count) and that program growth requires roughly 99 special-education classrooms next year — including about 40 full-sized rooms for intensive programs such as "foundations" and "public day." Anderson said many of those rooms are now housed at Oak Grove and Webster and warned that moving those programs into the Plan E configuration would leave the middle-school level unable to accommodate required spaces without significant retrofits or keeping an additional building open.

"We can't afford not to" install necessary accessibility or programming supports, administration said in other agenda items about isolated capital needs; the special-education briefing made clear such costs and space requirements affect which consolidation plans are feasible.

Trustees were split. Several members said the new information changed their view and declared privately they would not vote for Plan E in its current form, arguing it "doesn't work" for teachers, students and course offerings. Others urged caution about moving quickly and recommended additional analysis: updating demographic projections, consulting a demographer, and reconvening a facilities committee or hiring consultants to help with implementation details and boundary mapping.

Board members agreed the district must make a decision quickly: administration and several trustees set a procedural deadline to have a single plan prepared for vote at the Nov. 24 board meeting. To that end the board scheduled a special/work session for Nov. 12 at 5:30 p.m. to vet Plans 2 and 7 (two-high-school models) and to allow public comment. Several trustees said if the current board cannot coalesce around a plan by Nov. 24, it should pause and defer some decisions to a later board after additional study.

The meeting highlighted tradeoffs trustees will face: Plan E preserves three high schools but produces only limited short-term savings and may force reductions in program depth; two-high-school plans offer larger fiscal relief but require hard boundary choices and risk community backlash. The administration told trustees it can refine staffing, utility and implementation estimates but reiterated that any projection depends on whether savings come through attrition, retirements or direct reductions.

Next steps: the board will convene Nov. 12 for an intensive planning session focusing on Plans 2 and 7, then is scheduled to act on a single plan at the Nov. 24 meeting. Administration told the board it will prepare refined numbers, boundary impacts and implementation scenarios to inform that vote.