School superintendents, lrom left: Russ McQuaide of Mathews, Toby Gibson of Brookfield and Joe Nohra of Liberty.

School superintendents, lrom left: Russ McQuaide of Mathews, Toby Gibson of Brookfield and Joe Nohra of Liberty.

Although a study by the Ohio Auditor of State of the feasibility of Brookfield, Mathews and Liberty school districts sharing services is only a couple of months old, it already has borne some fruit, officials from the schools said.
Liberty is losing its bus mechanic and the districts are talking about sharing a mechanic, they said.
“We sat down, kind of looked at some numbers to kind of see if it’s something that’s actually doable here in the near future,” Brookfield Supt. Toby Gibson said at a Dec. 5 public meeting hosted by Brookfield. “I think, other than working on same minor details, I think it’s something that definitely can be done there shortly.”
The study looked at five areas: regular and special education transportation, special education, food service and administration, and found that potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars could be saved if the schools shared services in four of those areas and sought an outside vendor for food service.
Mathews Supt. Russ McQuaide said the study is not a precursor to consolidation.
“We’re looking at a feasibility study for shared services, not a feasibility study for consolidation,” he said. “They’re really two night and day different things. We don’t want to duplicate costs if we don’t have to.”
McQuaide noted that just having access to Gibson and Liberty Supt. Joe Nohra has made a difference in how he approaches issues.
“In our district, we recently had our food services supervisor to leave,” McQuaide said. “Joe and I discussed some options and this showed me some of the costs in comparisons between districts, which was really valuable. Although we didn’t go down the shared-services route, we discussed thoroughly. One of the ideas that Mathews had was that maybe we could make some structural changes inside, and that’s exactly what we did. We already are seeing some very nice results from that.”
Nohra said the three schools are taking “baby steps” toward sharing services. Instead of looking at sharing transportation, they are just looking at sharing a mechanic.
“You can’t all of a sudden say, ‘We’re gonna share buses, we’re just gonna be one operation,’” Nohra said. “For us to recommend that to our boards, I think we all feel the same way, wouldn’t be something that would be best for the children. But, if we can take a little piece of this and begin with something like that, it could lead to five, seven, eight, 10 years of working together.”
The study does not lay out what steps need to be taken to share a service, McQuaide said.
promo“We need to get more in depth in certain areas,” he said. “If you share a treasurer, you wonder how much additional support staff I need in the mix. Yes, we’ve split that cost, but we also have other surrounding costs that we’re going to make sure we analyze before we make these decisions.”
The superintendents said they will need to bring their boards into discussions of many issues, but the groundwork for some big decisions can be laid now. Nohra noted he will probably retire in three to five years.
“I see that as a wonderful opportunity,” Nohra said. “Our (student enrollment) numbers have dropped. I have no problem saying here, and I publicly will say it, that I think in the very near future that we could work with another school district on the superintendent’s position.”
Nicole Bent, who oversees the unit that performed the study, said the superintendents are making the right move by proceeding slowly,
“In my former life, I actually managed a program that was just aimed at shared services,” she said. “Creating that dialog and building those relationships so you can have bigger things in the future, that is the key to successful shared services.”
Brookfield school board member George Economides said there are many obstacles to be faced in sharing services, such as contracts and unions, but that heading in that direction is important.
“People in the state of Ohio are telling us, ‘Find a way to get it done,’” he said. “If we can show some steps in making change, finding things that are working, then as we go along, when things get a little more complicated, you’ll be able to buy time and try to get people’s confidence that what we’re doing is in the best interest of the kids and the best interest of the communities.”