Millersburg students poised to transition to Fairfield

May 1—MILLERSBURG — There are just 46 junior high schoolers projected to attend Millersburg Elementary-Middle School next school year.

Fairfield Community Schools is attempting to make a proposed drastic change in the district a little bit easier for 7th and 8th-grade parents and students.

On Wednesday, the Fairfield Community Schools Board of Trustees hosted a work session with parents and staff of Millersburg school to address the situation.

Last year teachers of Millersburg Elementary-Middle School helped to fill vacant roles on emergency licenses. An English teacher filled in to teach 6th through 8th-grade science, a social studies teacher filled in to teach 6th through 8th-grade Intro to Business, and an elementary music teacher filled in for the 6th through 8th grade Exploring Music class.

In order to maintain their positions and keep the roles filled, teachers would need to go back to college for additional licensure.

"If we don't change the programming, teachers will have to complete college coursework to continue, and that will be out of their own pocket and that's something that wasn't a desire to a lot of them," Cannon said.

But in the last five weeks, Cannon explained, Fairfield Jr./Sr. High School has lost two English teachers, a Math teacher, and a German teacher. Two of those teachers were at the junior high level. Student enrollment is dropping across the district for a variety of reasons but at Fairfield Jr./Sr. High School, there are roughly 300 junior high students.

"When we looked at the positions that were open, we had a choice," Cannon said. "We can hire new teachers for that position, or we have teachers there that can fill that position. The problem is if we don't fill those, and these enrollment numbers keep declining, we have a two-fold problem. We have a situation where maybe next year we have to lay off a teacher because we simply don't have the numbers to support."

Last Friday, district leadership met with junior high teachers to get their thoughts on the subject and Cannon said the response was positive.

"We knew that we could replace the teachers over there with teachers over here and also make room for kiddos here going into 7th and 8th grade," she said.

The proposed transitory plan would see Millersburg 7th and 8th graders becoming Fairfield 7th and 8th graders, but only part-time for the 2024-25 school year.

Millersburg junior high students would attend classes at Fairfield Jr./Sr. High School for 1st through 5th period, clustered together, and then return to Millersburg for 6th and 7th period. Three teachers, one for English, one for Math, and one for Social Studies, would transfer with them.

Millersburg Elementary-Middle School Principal Wade Jagger offered a draft schedule that the district is still sorting out, with Electives for 1st period, English for 2nd period, WIN (Interventions) for 3rd period, Social Studies for 4th period, and Science in 5th period, before being transported back to Millersburg at 1:30 p.m. At Millersburg, they'd take Art and Music or PE and a Foreign Language, depending on the grade.

The proposed plan would allow junior high students at the school to continue to easily transition to after-school activities including sporting events on the Millersburg campus, but students would also be permitted to attend programs at the Fairfield campus as well, and 8th graders could still go on the annual Washington D.C. trip.

In addition to the change in class locations, the district is also planning to offer a morning study hall for its Millersburg junior high schoolers from 7:30-8 p.m. In order to honor the school's heavily Amish population, the study hall would allow for students to continue to not bring home their laptops as often as possible, by completing work on campus.

Sixth-grade students would revert back to being elementary school students. In-district transfers for elementary students would still be accepted.

The following school year, 2025-26, Millersburg would be reconfigured by board vote to a K-6 Millersburg Elementary School.

The biggest concerns for parents weren't related to the school transition, but transportation. In fact, one man blamed some of the loss of students on the district's poor transportation system. Some students get on the bus as early as 6:30 a.m. and don't get home until almost 4 p.m. Cannon said while transportation and busing won't be addressed before the end of the year, routes will be remapped over the summer.

Dani Messick is the education and entertainment reporter for The Goshen News. She can be reached at dani.messick@goshennews.com or at 574-538-2065.