North Lawrence Community Schools share results of staff survey regarding Oolitic Middle School

BEDFORD – North Lawrence Community Schools recently shared the results of a survey taken by staff members regarding the potential of the corporation beginning next school year with one or two middle schools.

Currently, NLCS operates two middle schools, Bedford Middle School and Oolitic Middle School, with a large enrollment disparity between the two. According to the Indiana Department of Education, enrollment at BMS was 562 students, while OMS had five.

The decision to switch the district to just one middle school was voted on by the NLCS board in July of 2022, just before the start of the school year. The board decided to keep both facilities open in a 3-3 vote at the time.

At the time of the vote, NLCS officials stated the proposal to close seventh and eighth grade operations at the Ooltic Campus was due to uneven opportunities between the two schools due to the enrollment disparity, with BMS having 446 students in the 2022 school year, compared to OMS with 179, as well as the corporation having a difficult time staffing the Oolitic facility for middle school, with just two teachers for grades seven and eight on staff to start the year.

In the survey, 228 NLCS staff members responded.

When asked how willing employees would be to consider working in one of the district’s two middle schools if they were both fully staffed heading into the 2023-24 school year, 43.4% said they would not be willing to consider at all, with 18% saying they wouldn’t be willing to consider, 24.1% remaining neutral, 6.1% somewhat willing to consider and 8.3% extremely likely to consider.

Staff were also asked if they were required by NLCS to relocate from their current position to one at OMS, and how likely they would be to continue working for NLCS.

Of those who responded, 46.9% stated they’d be very unlikely to continue working for the corporation, 14.5% responded that they would be unlikely to continue, 21.5% were neutral, 6.6% were likely to remain with NLCS and 4.4% were very likely to stay. Additionally, 6.1% of responders are already working at the Oolitic K-8 Campus.