Mad River Local Schools to reduce staff due to decreased enrollment, lack of funding

RIVERSIDE — The Mad River Board of Education will hold an official meeting this evening to discuss staff reduction due to the decreasing enrollment and lack of funding.

Mad River Local Schools announced, in a press release last week, that they plan to cut staff.

The district said in a statement that they will be not replacing two staff members who retired or resigned and will be reducing one staff member whose job is being eliminated.

The district also said they will be reducing five school therapists and four para-professional aides.

They said they will instead be contracting therapy services with Samaritan Behavioral Health.

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“If the district did not reduce the current school therapists, additional certified teaching staff members would have been reduced,” Mad River Schools said in a statement.

Because of the low property tax valuation of the district, the schools said they rely on state and federal funding for around 80 percent of operations costs.

Most of the funding is tied to the amount they receive per student, but with decreased enrollment since the beginning of the pandemic, the district said they have seen a significant loss in state funding.

“This loss equates to approximately $882,000 in state funding the district no longer receives which has exacerbated the need for staff reductions that we could not have anticipated pre-COVID,” the district said.

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Mad River Local Schools said they have communicated the staff cuts to affected staff as well as had ongoing conversations with the Mad River Education Association union president.

In a release, the Mad River Education Association said they were “alarmed” by the plan to cut staff.

“Now more than ever Mad River students and their families need access to dedicated, experienced, and well-trained professionals who provide essential classroom instruction and vital support services. Our professional staff have spent years building relationships with our students and their families. After the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, our students deserve and require consistency and support, not more change or instability. The loss of so many experienced and committed professionals has the potential to create unfair and unsafe conditions for our students,” Amy Holbrook, president of Mad River Education Association said in the release.

The meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. April 25.

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