The Hutchinson District 423 School Board voted 4-1 Monday night (Nov. 10) to not proceed with consolidation talks with McLeod West School District.

The question of consolidation was not on the meeting’s original agenda, but Board Chair Keith Kamrath asked the board to discuss it. He said McLeod West had approached Hutchinson, Glencoe-Silver Lake, Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop and Buffalo Lake-Hector about meeting this week to discuss consolidation.

McLeod West is seeking to consolidate with two districts in time for the 2009-10 school year. If it cannot consolidate, it will be dissolved.

Under consolidation, Kamrath said, districts that merge would also merge their pool of licensed and unlicensed employees. A newly consolidated district would be assigned a new number. Its school board would be required to have proportional representation over its entire geographic area.

“Brownton and Stewart would like to consolidate with two different districts,” Superintendent Daron VanderHeiden said. “I don’t know if McLeod West has got a great deal of leverage right now with their debt.”

Board Member Brian Pollmann was concerned that if Hutchinson merged with McLeod West, it would take on some of the burden of the latter district’s $2 million debt.

For more on this story, see the Leader’s Nov. 13 print edition.

(Jorge Sosa is a staff writer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sosa@hutchinsonleader.com [2])