Greenwood School Board gets update on collaboration with Loyal

In the past few months, the Greenwood and Loyal school districts have been working towards establishing a system of closer collaboration with each other. Forming a joint committee, the two districts have been meeting to figure out what exactly that will entail and the process the districts will need to go through to get there. Greenwood School District Superintendent Joe Green provided the school board with an update on the committee’s work during the district’s regular meeting Jan. 25.

The committee and members of the administration traveled to Whitehall this past month to see an example of a collaboration at work between school districts. According to Green, the Whitehall School District has agreements with neighboring schools to share resources such as staff and technology while still maintaining each school’s own identity. It’s a real-life example of how a collaboration could work between Greenwood and Loyal, and leaders from the Whitehall district have been giving them advice on how to work out their own agreements.

“They have the same school calendar; classes start and end at the same time,” said Green. “They pool their resources together to help kids and schedule things together. They don’t exchange money; they mostly shuttle students between the schools for classes instead of the teachers. If one school has a better lab, the students may also go there for a class.”

After attending that presentation in Whitehall, Green said there were a few important things that he learned from the experience. When pursuing the school district’s collaboration with Loyal, he said these would be important things to consider.

“Two things I took away from that meeting was that, one, don’t wait until you’re ready. Otherwise you’ll never do it,” he said. “Second, we have to think about these things with staff shortages. There are a lot of districts right now that are thinking about cooperation... Right now, the model of school districts is one of competition with each other. We’re all going, ‘What can I do different than the districts around me?’ But collaboration takes the competition out between the school districts. We’re no longer competing; we’re working together to make a better school for all our kids.”

As part of the process to increase collaboration between the two districts, Green said there were a couple things already on the list of things to figure out. Sports and extracurricular activities are on the top of that list, and as these groups merge, he said it was important to consider what their future identity together would be.

“We are going to be co-oping a large number of activities,” he said. “We do that already with softball, for example, and they have a uniform that is tied to both schools. But what are we going to look like without losing our identity? We are the Greenwood Indians; they are the Loyal Greyhounds. We don’t want to lose that, but together, what are we? It needs to be something that identifies both of us... I think it’s time to consider that. Otherwise our identity will be lost. We’ll just be the LGs or the GLs.”

No action was taken on the question of the uniforms and mascot, but the members of the board agreed that the students at the districts should be able to provide some input on a potential future mascot and determine the colors the two districts will use from there.

“When we joined from the country schools we got a chance to vote on the mascot, if I remember right,” said board president Jerome Krempasky. “I think it is fair if we ask the kids again what they would like.”

In other action taken by the board at their meeting, it was approved to hire a new head coach for the high school football team in preparation for the co-op varsity team Greenwood and Loyal will have in 2024, as well as head coaches for the middle school baseball and football teams.