By Emily Hoffman
    The Wauneta Breeze
    
     About 40 parents, teachers, concerned citizens and even a couple babies filled the band room at the Wauneta Attendance Center Monday night to volley ideas about the state of the school district, its budget and its student enrollment.
     Wauneta-Palisade Superintendent Charles Isom headed up the evening, the fourth in a series of focus group meetings.
     Isom formed the original focus group as the first step in a process to get a feel for what the community was thinking about the school, and to hear their ideas about what to do concerning the loss of students and the resulting budget crunch.
     Those attending this week's meeting were mostly from the Wauneta area. The previous three meetings were smaller, with under 10 attending, and garnered mostly Palisade residents.
     Isom said at Monday's meeting that he chose people for the focus group randomly, "out of a hat" as the first step in the process, and only to hear ideas, not to form policy.
     Monday night's meeting swelled in number from past meetings due to word of mouth. To begin discussion he had groups form and write down their worst fears, and best hopes concerning the district, then the group as a whole talked about ideas to reach those goals, and put to rest those fears.
     The three options presented to the group were to leave both Wauneta and Palisade an elementary attendance center and combine the 1st and 2nd grades and the 3rd and 4th grades, with both towns keeping a kindergarten.
     The next two solutions were to move all the grade school students to either Wauneta or to Palisade.
     Following discussion, with people airing concerns, asking questions and sharing ideas, Isom requested those attending to participate in a straw poll.
     Bus the kids to Wauneta? Bus them to Palisade? Combine the classes?
     According to Isom, the results panned out as follows: 24 would like to see all the grade school in Palisade, five didn't care where the grade school was located, just that classes weren't combined, two wanted the grade school in Wauneta and one wanted the classes combined and to adjust accordingly.
     "Combining classrooms, which I thought would be an easy sell, has become a hard sell," said Isom in an interview on Tuesday.
     He said as he talked to parents and those in the community over the last couple months, he's found more and more support, in both towns, for the grade school to be in one building, and located in Palisade.
     The next step for Isom is to see what the school board thinks. Isom has slated discussion at Monday's school board meeting to initiate steps to move all the grade school students to Palisade.
     Following the school board vote, Isom will hold community meetings to hear concerns about the plan and answer questions anyone might have.
     Moving students to Palisade can't be done unless the people in the original Wauneta school district vote to allow it.
     "You have to start somewhere," said Isom. "Whether we get told yes or we get told no, we have to try."
     The only thing that can be done to ease the budget crunch without a vote of either Wauneta or Palisade is to combine classrooms.
     "It's an emotional issue," said Isom. "There's no way around that."
     The hope of the administration is to get people involved in the process.
     "Please come to me with concerns so I can address them," said Isom. "And if not to me, to a board member. We want, we need your input on this decision."
     The school board meeting will be at the Palisade Attendance Center library Monday night, Feb. 14, at 7 MT/8 CT.