Several area school districts have begun plans to include inter-school sharing.
Westfield, Ripley and Chautauqua Lake have announced a memorandum of understanding among the three districts to open registration in high school classes to each other's students in order to offer greater class choices.
Sherman, Clymer, and Panama school districts also have a plan in place, but it is a much more informal one.
"Sherman, Panama and Clymer schools are looking for ways that we can collaborate," said Thomas Schmidt, Sherman superintendent.
The districts offer professional development courses for their teachers, but have yet to begin sharing students.
"Right now we do it with some training and workshops for our teachers, but we are not sharing students yet at this time, although we have looked at how we could possibly do that and we are hoping to move in that direction," he said.
The three districts are planning on continuing their informal plan this school year, said Bert Lictus, Panama superintendent.
"We are exploring the best possibilities for our three districts to work together and to see how it turns out," Schmidt said. "Those conversations are happening between school principals right now including superintendents to see the best way to make it work, if we can make it work, so that we offer the best things for our students and do so at a cost that is reasonable for our taxpayers."
"We are also looking into the use of technology, such as Moodle, to offer some classes in non-traditional formats," Lictus said. "What we found is we need to do that using technology, because transporting students takes time and it takes money. So I think when we start sharing classes for students, the use of technology such as Moodle, and other online courses are the way that it will have to be because moving students is time consuming and cost prohibitive, but moving information is something that is much easier to do."
The districts do not have a time frame concerning student sharing, "because we haven't gotten to that point yet," said Schmidt, though Lictus believes that the plan will start to be formalized within the next year.