P-J photo by Sara Holthouse The CSP school boards polled Tuesday night during a joint board meeting to move forward in the merger process with a petition to gauge community support.

PANAMA — A study has found that a merger of the Clymer, Sherman and Panama school districts is feasible.

Now, it’s time to see how feasible it is for the communities involved.

The three school boards will have to officially decide to move forward with the process and how to gauge community support, though no formal action will be taken until July. The next required step in order to continue forward is for each district to get community support through a straw vote or petition. BOCES District Superintendent David O’Rourke explained that all three districts need to use the same method, and that both the straw vote and petition are non-binding.

“Neither the straw vote or petition are statutory,” O’Rourke said. “They don’t bind a new district, they don’t create a new board, those straw votes or petitions, but you have to determine it because otherwise the commissioner doesn’t feel empowered or that it’s appropriate to impose a statutory vote.”

The straw vote or petition signals to the state that the communities want to see the merged district and have the statutory vote, O’Rourke said.

For the straw vote, it will be held on a mutually determined date in each district, but if one is not held in one of the districts or it fails, the process is over for that district. For the petition, each district is required to get a signature count that exceeds the amount of their last three budget votes. The petition will be set in the district office, and each district can also designate volunteers to go and get signatures, with the final tally done by the District Clerk.

The three boards of education discussed Tuesday night whether they felt it was right to move forward with the process, and whether to choose the straw vote or petition. It was noted that if any one board decides not to continue on, there is an option for the other two to continue, which would require a revision to the study, public hearings, and a new petition or straw vote before continuing on to the final statutory vote.

When looking at the petition, Clymer would be required to get 160 votes from their community, Sherman 301 and Panama 154. O’Rourke noted that this is the average of the last three years of voting done in each community, plus one.

Some points and concerns addressed when it came to the petition were the large number of votes Sherman would be required to get compared to the other two districts, privacy that can come with voting, the ability for conversation and to answer questions with the petition, and the longer period of time the districts would have with the petition compared to the one voting day, when community members might not be able to come out to vote. It was also noted that while Sherman has to get a large number of signatures, it would be hard to do but not impossible.

It was also added that with the last merger process between Clymer and Panama there were a lot of people who misunderstood the straw vote, and that with the petition there would be more flexibility and three or four months to plan and work on getting signatures.

“We want to start the petition at the same time in all three districts,” O’Rourke said. “So we are targeting mid-August as when the first community forum would take place, August 18 held at Sherman.”

The community forums would begin with the one held at Sherman for the opportunity for the public to ask questions and the petition would open for everyone on that day. The petition would be open through the other community forum days and close October 1. Petition signatures would also be able to be gathered at the community forum meetings. Community forum meetings are scheduled for Sherman on August 18, followed by Panama on September 16 and Clymer September 24.

It was also pointed out that Sherman’s 300 signatures sounds like a lot but if they got 10 volunteers, each would only have to get 30 signatures each. The three districts are not allowed to help each other get signatures. O’Rourke added that it is not required that people sign the petition if asked.

Additionally, the petition was not an option during the last Clymer, Panama merger process that saw a failed straw vote.

“The petition is actually a response to a situation when a four district merger attempt became a three district merger attempt after a straw vote, and then at the statutory vote one of those three districts defeated it by one vote,” O’Rourke said. “There were two districts that wished to continue and at that point the administrators from the districts and the consultants and we asked, ‘come on state, let’s find something humane here rather than put people through this over and over again. Can we get a petition to determine a new statutory vote for the two?'”

At that point the petition was introduced and since then O’Rourke said the state has felt more and more confident that it shows enough community support to justify going forward to a statutory vote.

Board members agreed that at this point they are invested and would plan on a motion to move forward with the process at their next scheduled Board of Education meetings on July 13, to allow the community to make their decisions. A poll was taken among the three school boards, and it was decided by the majority to move forward with the petition as the method to gauge community support to allow them to move forward to the statutory vote. No formal action was taken Tuesday night, and all three districts will officially vote to pass resolutions both to move forward in the process and to use the petition for community support during their next board meetings in July.

The full 150 page study along with Tuesday night’s presentation can be viewed on CSPhub.org. Questions can continue to be emailed as well to CSPstudy@e2ccb.org.