BORDEN, Ind. — The West Clark Community School district has officially split into two districts: Silver Creek and Borden-Henryville. It's the first time its been done in the state of Indiana.
Voters just approved the split in a referendum last month. Now both districts are working to move forward, planning to start school at the end of the month.
"I expect some bumps along the way, but we're going to make it work somehow," said Sam Gardner, who was chosen as the Borden-Henryville interim superintendent at a reorganization meeting Wednesday. "I look forward to the opportunity here."
Gardner will serve as the interim superintendent for one year. He said the newly elected school board will begin searching for an official replacement in the next few months.
Myra Wright Powell, Brian Guernsey, Kevin Puckett, Terry Roudenbush and Richard Belcher were sworn in Wednesday as board members for the Borden-Henryville District.
"Top priority right now is the school reentry plan," said Gardner. "We're going to follow every guideline we have from the CDC the state, the county."
Gardener said they plan to be aggressive about grant funding and plan to share some resources with Silver Creek District as the schools go their separate ways.
"We've entered into some cooperative agreements having to do with technology and food service," said Gardner. "Hopefully there will be a shared agreement in special education services."
Those shared agreements still must be passed through the Silver Creek School Board.
"We are 100% optimistic that we can come up with shared services," said Chris Rountree, a school board member for the Silver Creek District. "Part of the process of doing this is to make sure there's no disruption to the stakeholders, whether that be faculty, staff, students or parents. To do that in the short period of time that the state has said we have to have everything in place, shared services is going to be a very important piece of that."
Borden-Henryville hopes to approve their reopening plan next Monday. That's also when Silver Creek District will discuss sharing agreements.