Lotto funds help push school merger efforts

The enlarged Arapaho district also will receive Butler's five buses, a van, two pickups, two school buildings, extra annual funding from ad valorem taxes and a one-time state payment of about $360,000.

That last item is an incentive offered by the state Education Department as an enticement for small districts to consolidate, said Shawn Hime, the state agency's finance director.

“This incentive helps them, once they've made that decision. It may not help them actually make the decision, but it may make them more open” to consolidating, he said.

Such was the case with Arapaho's school board, which voted to accept Butler's students, pending approval by Butler voters. Voters in the Butler district agreed overwhelmingly this week to be annexed.

Arapaho Superintendent Bob Haggard said the lump-sum state payment “was not a deciding factor at all,” but conceded it will make for an easier transition.

Much of the money will go toward severance packages for Butler school employees not retained and for transportation costs associated with the new, longer bus routes, Haggard said.

Annexation not common The Custer County school annexation was one of two district merger votes Tuesday. In Atoka County, nearly 90 percent of voters in the Farris district rejected a plan to be absorbed by the Lane school district.

In both cases, the votes involved annexations, rather than consolidations. An annexation ends one district's identity and gives full control to the district receiving the other's students. A consolidation requires both school boards to decide upon a new district identity, team mascot and board representation.

Hime said both situations allow districts to tap the state consolidation fund, which currently holds about $8 million. The money comes from the Oklahoma lottery, which by law sends 5 percent of the state's share into that fund.

The consolidation fund has taken in $9.3 million since the lottery began in 2005.

Through this school year, only two districts had taken advantage: Stonewall, which got $441,000 when it took in the neighboring McLish district in 2006, and Coalgate, which got about $765,000 when it absorbed the Olney district beginning this school year.

The fund works like this: Districts that merge get $1,000 per student from their combined enrollment. The one-time bonus is on top of money awarded through the districts' annual state-aid formula, Hime said.

Districts forced by the state Board of Education to merge into other schools, like the Lost City school in Cherokee County was this year, don't qualify for the consolidation money, he said.

Butler Superintendent Rod McDaniel has seen his district's eventual absorption coming since he took the job four years ago. Its demise was caused largely by the closing of a juvenile detention center at Union City, 95 miles away.

In late 2002, the state Office of Juvenile Affairs canceled its contract with the detention center's private owner.

For years, the center's 80 students counted on Butler's daily enrollment sheet because closer districts wanted no partnership with the detention center, McDaniel said.

When the center closed (it since has reopened for adult prisoners), the accompanying state aid disappeared.

Merger has pros, cons The approaching merger won't affect Arapaho's Class B status for athletics, but it will give Butler's students more opportunities, McDaniel said.

This year, Butler High School had five boys try out for basketball. Fielding a team required the school to co-opt with Taloga, 45 minutes away.

“They practiced almost every day. They'd come down here one week, and we'd go up there the next week,” McDaniel said.

He said being annexed opens Butler students to band and speech, two activities Butler couldn't offer.

However, the merger also will leave an undetermined number of employees, including McDaniel, without a job.

The future also is uncertain for Butler's two school buildings. The one for upper grades will almost certainly close.

The K-6 building could remain open, depending on the response that comes back from letters of intent Haggard recently mailed to parents in the Butler district.

“If there's enough students to justify keeping that school open, we will,” he said.