Clearwater Board Votes To End Agreement With Orchard

By Adam Maly
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Clearwater took action Sunday afternoon to dissolve its reorganization agreement with Orchard and separate their schools. 

In an 80-minute special meeting at the Clearwater gym, the original Clearwater board (the four advisory members and two Unified Board members) unanimously voted to request to the Unified Board to dissolve the agreement at the end of the 2016-17 school year.

The motion, made by Advisory Board President Amy Thiele, would put a PK-12 school in both Clearwater and Orchard next year, thus separating as schools but both remaining part of the Nebraska Unified School District. 

The motion will now go to the Nebraska Unified Board to take formal action. The next Unified meeting is set for Feb. 15 in Verdigre.

Many Clearwater stakeholders shared their thoughts on the future of the district and potentially splitting with Orchard. 

"Obviously, we know where people of the district stand," Thiele said. "We have to do what's best for educating our kids. We have to look out the unified district. We don't want any kids leaving Clearwater, but we don't want any kids to leave the Unified District. That will hurt us in the long run."

When asked what the costs would be if Clearwater split from Orchard, Principal Mike Sanne said "three to four hundred thousand dollars." After hearing that figure, one stakeholder said even though he did not have children in the school, he supported having his taxes increase with a split.

On January 18, the Unified Board voted 4-2 to begin a three-year rotation with the middle school and high school between the two communities.  The motion, made by Teri Hergert of Royal, was to go into effect for the 2017-18 school year, bringing the high school back to Orchard for three years with the middle school in Clearwater.

The special meeting saw many comments and concerns from the public regarding rotation.

"Rotation would be detrimental to our kids education as Their will be no stability,  It will be impossible to hire good teachers that are willing to rotate, or keep the good ones that we already have. Teachers want stability as much as the kids do."

"With all this confusion, and no one knowing what the future is going to bring, we are going to have a lower quality teacher come here to work."


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