Published: September 28, 2009 08:15 am      

Hyndman community fighting recommendation to close school

District superintendent doesn’t expect decision for at least two years

Dr. Glenn Thompson, superintendent of the Bedford Area School District, presented this slideshow at the board of education's September meeting to help illustrate the history of the Hyndman campus and why the potential closure of the school could be a part of the solution

Click here for presentation (PDF)



HYNDMAN, Pa. — Bridget Emerick said the Hyndman Middle-Senior High School is the lifeblood of the town.

As the borough’s largest employer, its mission and work force helps to sustain the grocery store, the post office, the banks, the hardware store and various locally owned businesses.

“It would be devastating to the community,” Emerick said, if the Bedford Area School District votes to close the school.

That’s exactly what will happen, however, if the nine-member Board of Education follows primary recommendation of a community task force that said the cost per student has risen beyond what the school district can afford. With teachers’ salaries, energy costs and other expenses soaring, many district officials feel it’s the only way to keep the district financially solvent instead of operating two high schools with a declining enrollment.

Emerick, a 1986 Hyndman graduate, is president of the school’s Parent Teacher Organization. She’s playing a leading role in the effort to hold off closing the school’s doors.

“This town needs the school,” she said. “We’re a very small town. We have businesses in the town (which) would probably lose business. I wouldn’t say they would close, but they would probably not be expanding. The school does a lot of business in town. And in a small town, they’re the biggest employer.”

A renovation project at Bedford Middle School triggered a study by EI Associates of Harrisburg, Pa., to evaluate every facility in the school district. The study is required when a single improvement project reaches a certain dollar amount.

Glenn Thompson, district superintendent, said he doesn’t expect any “big decisions” to be made for at least two years, possibly longer.

The proposal “immediately brought an emotional response from the community of Hyndman,” Thompson said. “But if you don’t plan for the future, you’re forced to react to it. The changes we wanted to make in Bedford Middle School did not mandate additional instructional space even with the additional students from the Hyndman campus to that building. However, it was because of that facility study the issue came up again.”

Thompson might, in fact, be one of Emerick’s biggest allies. In an ideal situation, he said, the school should remain open as a rich source of history, tradition and community spirit that bonds the town of some 1,000 residents.

If money wasn’t the issue, “I’d leave it alone,” Thompson said. “I don’t think it’s the best thing to do for kids. With a $24 million budget, we can do anything we want to do, we can’t do everything we want to do. Right now, it appears to be the right thing to do ... until we have to do something else. And even then, the something else may not be (to) close that school.”

Instead of voting on the issue at its September public meeting, the board opted instead to endorse Thompson’s idea of creating a nine-member committee to look at a host of issues that could arise if Hyndman’s students rode school buses to Bedford every day, such as transportation costs, work force needs and impact on extracurricular activities — both academic and athletic.

The bus ride is of particular concern to Emerick, a mother of a sixth-grade Hornet and a 17-month-old future Hornet, Hyndman’s mascot. Some students, she said, could spend 75 minutes on a bus ride each way. By her calculations, that’s 243.75 days out of a student’s school life spent on a bus.

“No one in town,” Emerick said, favors the school’s closure. “Most of our kids here in town participate in at least one after-school activity. If parents have to run them to Bedford and back ... the logistics of that are almost impossible.”

Thompson said a school closure isn’t automatic. The community itself can choose to create a charter apart from the Bedford Area School District. A 51 percent vote from Hyndman and Bedford voters could allow the Hyndman school to secede from the district, but a school district from a contiguous county would have to agree to add Hyndman. A third option, one used more often in rural school districts across the country, is the creation of a “cyber environment,” Thompson said, which utilizes the Internet in place of classroom instruction.

One extension of that possibility is the Hyndman students would still be able to participate in extracurricular activities as Hornets, including sports, because the school’s gymnasium and locker rooms would remain available.

“It’s not a very good option, but I guess it’s an option if you don’t want to be consolidated,” Thompson said. “We offer a pretty solid cyber education right now” for a limited number of students, “but it’s probably not the best way for kids to learn.”

The board next meets for a public work session Oct. 12 in Bedford and a regular public meeting Oct. 20 in Hyndman. The consolidation issue is not the expected primary topic at the Hyndman meeting, however. Thompson said it has long been his plan to review the district’s annual assessment scores.

A modified version of Thompson’s PowerPoint presentation, which includes the 50-year history of multiple consolidation efforts, was shown at the Bedford Area School District’s September meeting. It can be viewed online at www.times-news.com.

Contact Kevin Spradlin at kspradlin@times-news.com.