Five fighting for two seats in West Clark

By TARA HETTINGER
Tara.Hettinger@newsandtribune.com

April 26, 2008 08:14 pm

— With time ticking closer to the May 6 election for West Clark Community School Corp. board members, one has dropped out leaving five people fighting for two at-large seats.
Two of those are the incumbents, Sandra Furnish Banet and Celia Adams Winters. The newcomers include Joe Basham, Brian McEwen and Gene Stinson.
Issues surrounding this race include the more than $31.6 million building project that is already under way and increasing the corporation’s graduation rate.
“In the most recent building plan, I feel that many parts of the project are not centered on the reason for some of the decisions in the first plan,” Brian McEwen wrote in his question and answer survey. “A main part of the building plan last time was to move Silver Creek students to one central campus. Now the plan is to move the youngest students off site. This appears to contradict the original plan.”
“It shows their lack of foresight,” Gene Stinson said. “They should have gone somewhere and built a second grade school.”
Joe Basham, who says he isn’t in favor of the split elementary school, said he wished the building project included more room for vocational programs, which is something he said will help increase graduation rates. He said that will keep the interest of students who may otherwise consider dropping out.
“Not everybody’s made for college,” he said. “I think we need to do a little more for those students that don’t plan to go to college.”
Sandra Furnish Banet said in her question and answer survey that her plan to increase the graduation rate for the corporation includes increasing advanced-placement courses at the high schools. She also said the implementation of full-day kindergarten should also yield higher rates.
The corporation’s graduation rate is 86.5 percent. However, the individual high schools’ rates range from 75.9 percent, at Henryville High School, to 93.6 percent, at Silver Creek High School.
“I don’t understand how there can be such a large gap among schools in the same corporation and so close together economically and geographically,” McEwen said in the survey.
He said he would like to research the reasons for the successes at SCHS and implement those ideas at HHS.
Celia Winters said the board already looks at other school corporations for ideas.
“We’re looking into different methods and ways and courses,” she said. “We always strive to do better.”
The school board election is May 6.

EDITOR’S NOTE: McEwen and Furnish Banet were not able to be reached via phone for comment, so quotes and information from their question and answer surveys were used.