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Biden opens Asia trip with Tokyo stop
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13 seniors headline Sullivan Daily Times 2013 All-County Football Team
Serving Sullivan County Since 1854 • ‘No One Covers Sullivan County Like We Do’
Tu e s d a y, D e c e m b e r 3 , 2 0 1 3 N P i e r c e P u b l i s h i n g I n c o r p o r a t e d N C o p y r i g h t 2 0 1 3 N 7 5 C e n t s N 3 5 C e n t s P e r I s s u e w i t h Ye a r S u b s c r i p t i o n
‘
It breaks my heart ... I’ve lived in Dugger all my life. I’m a high school alum.”
Dejected in Dugger
— GREG ELLIS
Save UHS committee president
The Northeast School Corp. Board of Trustees voted 32, to close Dugger schools as part of reorganization Monday night at North Central Junior/Senior High School. At right, above, trustees vote to close Dugger Elementary School. This was after a similar vote to close Union Junior/Senior High School. At right, below, Dugger supporters walk out before the end of the meeting upon learning the schools will close effective the 2014-15 school year.
Opponents of move walk out after decision
By HAROLD BOSSTICK news2.sdt@gmail.com The Northeast School Corp. Board of Trustees voted, 3-2, on several motions Monday night to move forward with district reorganization and consolidation that included closing Dugger’s schools. Effective at the end of this school year, students who currently attend Dugger Elementary and Union Junior/Senior High schools will be bused to other schools in the corporation. “I agree with the motion based on the information that I reviewed,” board Vice President Marci Childs told the hundreds packed inside North Central Junior/Senior High School for the special meeting. “I believe that this motion is in the best interests of the students in Northeast School Corporation.”
Photos by HAROLD BOSSTICK
See DUGGER on Page 7
COUNTY COMMISSIONERS:
Doubling up for second tax deed sale in early 2014 By DENNIS CLARK news.sdt@gmail.com A second property deed tax sale was given the official go-ahead at the Sullivan County Commissioners bimonthly meeting on Monday. A total of 23 properties have already been identified for the sale, with the possible addition of one more property, said commissioners’ attorney John
Elmore described last Elmore. The sale is expected to be conducted in year’s tax deed sale as an unmitigated success, noting February or March. the county sold 10 of Only 12 propthe 12 real estate erties, after two parcels, for an 83 were turned over to percent success rate. the town of The deed sale Hymera, were consisted of properincluded in the first ties that had been deed tax sale in through two tax March 2013. ELMORE sales and hadn’t sold “We will be doubling the number of in hopes of returning them properties in this next sale,” to the tax rolls. The parcels were approved by the comElmore said.
missioners last year as a trial run. The opening bids were $715 for each of the properties, which included costs for title work and advertising. Breaking even was the goal, but that goal was exceeded, realizing a $3,000 profit thanks to a spirited bidding war on a pair of properties. See COMMISSIONERS on Page 6
Get in the Christmas spirit on the courthouse square If the weather forecast — below freezing temperatures with a few snow showers — is any indication, it will likely, as the song goes, “feel a lot like Christmas.” Christmas in Sullivan is scheduled for 5 to 9 p.m. Friday, centered mostly in and around the Sullivan
County Courthouse “It’s a great familysquare. oriented event,” SOS’s The sixth annual cel- Deann Talley added. ebration is coordiThe Christmas tree, located on the nated by Streets of Sullivan. northwest corner of “The idea is the square, will be to bring people officially lit at 5 downtown, the p.m. That will set kids can greet the stage for Santa Santa, and also be BENGOCHEA Claus to arrive at a help to the local 5:30. Santa will businesses,” SOS secre- visit with children on the tary Judy Bengochea northside of the square, said. and will be available for
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Inside/ Newspapers in Education
By DENNIS CLARK news.sdt@gmail.com
N Tonight
Rain Possible
NESC trustees vote, 3-2 to close Dugger’s schools
Wednesday Rain Possible
550 620 Wed. night: low 350
pictures. A new feature this year is a wagoneer, providing free horse drawn wagon rides for up to eight to 10 people around the courthouse square. “The wagon this year will be able to handle more people at a time, so hopefully they won’t have to stand in line so long,” Talley said. See CHRISTMAS on Page 6
PG3/ World
Holiday Staple
Shelburn kindergartners make a pumpkin pie
YANUKOVYCH
Facing protests, Ukraine leader again courts EU
The Times needs photos for its “Picture of the Day” segment. Submit your photo and identifying information to the Times office or by email to life.sdt@gmail.com. Sullivan Daily Times Readers of the Day: JIM & CAROL McKINNEY, Graysville
Crosley’s murder trial moved to May Times staff report A jury trial has been against him, with the senpushed back in the case tencing to be left up to the against one of the two court. Greene County men Another stipulation accused of murdering a of Buskirk’s deal is that 19-year-old Linton three of his four counts woman earlier this year. are to run concurrently, Randal E. Crosley’s with the sentencing for jury trial is now sched- the remaining charge — uled for May 19 in conspiracy to commit Greene Superior Court in rape — to either run conBloomfield. currently or consecutiveCrosley, 25, ly, depending on and Jordan W. the wishes of Judge Buskirk, 26, each Dena Martin. face charges of “(Buskirk) murder, conspiracy agrees to continue to commit murder, to cooperate with conspiracy to comthe State of Indiana mit rape and crimi- C R O SL EY by testifying truthnal confinement in fully at any hearthe June 6 death of ing, deposition or trial Katelyn Wolfe. Crosley involving co-defendant, also faces drug-dealing Randal Crosley,” the charges stemming from agreement continues. his alleged sale of preCourt documents scription medication to allege Buskirk and Wolfe hours before she Crosley killed Wolfe in was slain. Greene County, then Buskirk agreed to a dumped her body in a plea deal filed last week remote Sullivan County in Greene Superior Court. lake. In it, he would admit guilt See TRIAL on Page 6 on all four charges
PG8/ Deaths
• Norman Eugene “Gene” Easter, Sullivan. Photos are available to view and purchase at
sullivan-times.com
Meetings Today
• Sullivan City Redevelopment Commission, 5 p.m. executive session followed by an open meeting at 6, Sullivan City Hall. • Sullivan Board of Public Works, 6 p.m., Sullivan City Hall. • Paxton Water Corp., 6:30 p.m., water office. • Busseron Conservancy District Board of Directors, 7 p.m., courthouse office. • Carlisle Town Council, 7:30 p.m., water office.
Perspectives
The Sullivan Daily Times • Tuesday, December 3, 2013 • Page 7
COMPILED BY THE SULLIVAN DAILY TIMES
Dugger
OPINION:
The devil is in the denominator By MORTON J. MARCUS • Eye on the Pie
Photo by HAROLD BOSSTICK A contingent of Dugger Elementary School and Union Junior/Senior High School supporters leave the meeting after hearing the fate of their schools.
Continued from Page One Later motions included transforming Farmersburg and Hymera elementary schools into kindergarten through fifth-grade facilities, moving sixth- through eighth-grade students to a new middle school in Shelburn Elementary School and retooling North Central as the corporation’s only ninth- through 12th-grade facility. HES will retain its developmental pre-school program. Childs and board members Norm Santus and Jeremy Swalls who reside in Fairbanks, Jackson and Curry townships, respectively, voted for the consolidation. Secretary Jennifer McCammon Pinkston and President Ron Frye, who reside in Cass and Jefferson townships, respectively, voted nay. DES and UHS primarily serve students in Cass and Jefferson townships. Dugger walks out Trustees hadn’t even finished their necessary motions to complete reorganization when they were met with jeers and shouts of anger mixed with the wailing of children. Roughly 10 minutes into the meeting, Save Union High School supporters walked out. “It breaks my heart,” said Greg Ellis, president of the Save UHS committee. “I’ve lived in Dugger all my life. I’m a high school alum.” Save UHS formed shortly after the trustees released a notice for an executive session on Nov. 4 to discuss “strategy” for, among other things, school consolidation outside of a public setting as allowed per Indiana law. When trustees made their initial proposal — essentially the same as Monday’s votes — on Nov. 11 during a public meeting, Save UHS successfully lobbied for a two-week freeze on voting so that they could review data and provide alternatives to closing the schools. During the following meeting on Nov. 25, Ellis pointed out that NESC is likely to see the vast majority of DES/UHS students leave the corporation. An informal poll of 144 families whose children attend the schools showed only a 3.4 percent retention rate, meaning the corporation would see a loss in funding from the state. Ellis said his children will not be staying. “I’ve got four children going to Union High School, and, if they stayed in Northeast, I would have four children going to three different schools in three different towns next year,” he said, adding, “If we don’t end up being able to move forward with keeping Union High School open, there’s no way — we couldn’t do it. My wife and I couldn’t run to
three different towns, to three different schools and pick kids up from basketball practice.” Also during the Nov. 25 meeting, Ellis outlined alternatives to save money, the major issue forcing consolidation. These included outsourcing janitorial and cafeteria jobs to private companies, enacting a tax referendum that would add 7.5 cents per $100 of assessed value to property taxes for NESC’s five townships, and renegotiating utility rates paid by the schools. Moving forward after the vote, however, Ellis said Save UHS is looking into legal options to save the school. “We’ve talked about many different scenarios,” he said. “I won’t go into detail right now on that because we’re still working that out, but, like I said, it’s not over. This isn’t anything different than we necessarily expected coming up tonight, and we’ll take that in stride.” Feasibly saving NESC The consolidation stems from a recommendation in a feasibility study performed by Dr. Robert Boyd from Indiana State University. Boyd argues that, due to projected decreases in enrollment for the corporation, it would be best served by four facilities, and, due to the condition of the buildings in Dugger, recommended ceasing the use of UHS because repairs would be too costly. It also suggested DES had a short lifespan before being in a similar condition to the high school. It was also this study that a second committee formed around — Save NESC, which argued the closures were the only way to save the corporation from financially floundering. “It’s the only decision that could have been economically feasible,” said Save NESC’s chairwoman Leslie Hawker, who added, “We’re in an economic position that a lot of people are in, and I don’t think anybody feels happy about the (economy) right now, and schools in Indiana are just one more of those.” The corporation has seen large decreases in funding, namely from losing 150 students over the last five years. This hurt NESC not only in population but in state dollars after Indiana legislators changed the school funding formula. Now, corporations receive a set amount — for NESC, about $6,000 — per student. Therefore, with less students comes less money. Since 2011, NESC has attempted to put off consolidation by firing a total of 16 teachers and cutting individual art, music, band and physical education classes at its elementary schools. Most recently, in May, the corporation came up
nearly $660,000 short of its original projected budget, resulting in the firing of five teachers and the demotion of the DES principal to an administrative assistant. “Like I’ve said before, the rural schools are being strangled because of the issues in funding Indianapolis, that money follows the child,” Hawker said. “We’ve been losing kids because we’ve had to cut programs, class sizes have gotten very large, and we can’t get the technology and stuff. “So maybe we’ll have an opportunity to gain some students back because we’ll be able to add some programs,” she continued. The NESC of the future NESC Superintendent Mark Baker said the corporation will now begin the process of transitioning for the 2014-15 school year and trying to mend the wounds caused by the reorganization. “We understand that there are a lot of hurt feelings through all this,” he said. “And, hopefully with time — time heals most wounds — and hopefully we’ll be able to bring them back with the curriculum that we are offering. “It’s just tough to say at this point, you go through all the decisions and hope that you make the right decisions,” he said. “And the planning is going to be crucial, so the rest of the school year, as we start to look at bus routes and boundary lines for elementary schools, (we hope) that we make the best decisions and, through the money that we save, again, that we can offer programs and curricula that we couldn’t offer in the past.” He also said a lot of what happens now in terms of logistics, classes and the future of DES/UHS faculty and staff depended on how Monday’s vote panned out. “The biggest step was ... to decide what restructuring was going to look like,” he said. “There were several options that people were talking about ... Now we can start to plan to see what that’s going to be. “Everything, in the past, was always done on seniority,” he continued. “But now, with Indiana code, it is based on evaluation and licensing, so we start to look at those and see what kind of needs that we have.” However, despite hopes for a renewed kinship, Baker acknowledged that this situation was always going to be rough. “I think the board felt like they’ve done the best that they could do with cards they’ve been dealt,” he said. “And our job now is to provide a program for all of our kids so — all those activities and classes and careers they want — that we’ll be able to offer those classes that we haven’t been able to offer in the past.”
While most folks have heard of the Terminator, many have forgotten the denominator. That’s the number below the line in a fraction. Fractions seem to have scared lots of folks even though they are all around us. Miles per gallon is certainly wellknown: miles driven divided by gallons of fuel used. The more miles your drive on a given amount of gas, the higher your mpg. The more gas you use for a given number of miles, the lower your mpg. Why then is another fraction such a mystery? Per capita personal income (PCPI) is simply total personal income divided by population. The higher the personal income for a given population, the greater the per capita figure. The more people you have for a given personal income, the lower your PCPI. Local and state economic development folks like good news, even if it is the result of negative news. When the PCPI figures for 2012 were released the week before Thanksgiving, Indiana as a state was in the envious position of having the third highest growth rate in the nation. How did this happen? Our personal income
growth was a stunning fifth fastest in the country for the year. That was teamed MA R C U S with a 0.3 percent population growth, 37th among the states, and less than half as fast as the United States. The slower the growth in population, the faster the growth in PCPI. How did this play out on the county level? Well, a press release from Wabash County was ecstatic with the news the county’s PCPI grew 6.6 percent, faster than the nation (3.4 percent) and faster than the state (4.9 percent). Neglected in the Wabash chest pounding was the population of the county declined by 0.6 percent. If your population declines, your PCPI is boosted. A total of 54 of Indiana’s 92 counties saw population decreases in 2012 according to the Census Bureau’s input to the PCPI numbers issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. PCPI has been recognized by our political leadership as an important, if not vital, measure of economic well-being. However, population decline is hardly the route
to a more vital community. Lagrange County demonstrates healthy growth. In 2012, this northern county, which depends heavily on manufacturing jobs in Elkhart County, ranked second in both PCPI and personal income growth, with slow population growth. Jennings County ranked first among the state’s counties in both PCPI and personal income growth, but saw its population drop during the year. Fast population growth has a depressing effect on a PCPI increase. Johnson County, for example, had its 6 percent growth in personal income become 4.7 percent growth in PCPI because of its 1.2 percent population growth. Ideally, a community wants to see its PCPI grow because its personal income is growing faster than its population. Indiana’s favorable PCPI growth must be evaluated recognizing that 60 percent of our counties are losing population and that growth of personal income, like the growth of population, is becoming more and more concentrated. (Morton Marcus is an independent economist, writer and speaker. Contact him at mortonjmarcus@yahoo.com)
EDITORIAL:
Curing newborn addictions calls for treating moms South Bend Tribune Pregnant women who use addictive drugs are the focus of a new push before the Indiana General Assembly. A task force of medical and legal authorities is requesting better regulation of painkillers, a mandate that health providers report every case of addiction withdrawal in newborns to the state and higher penalties for drug abusers and their suppliers. The state doesn’t have a clear picture of how big its problem is — which is good enough reason to improve reporting requirements. But, according to one Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome report, the number of newborns with opiate drug withdrawal nationwide has more than tripled over the last decade to 5.63 per 1,000 births each year. And a separate federal drug abuse agency found nonmedical prescription drug use in Indiana higher than the national average.
Babies born into the world experiencing withdrawal may tremble, hiccup and cry uncontrollably. Or disengage so that they have difficulty interacting with caregivers. They may have seizures. Or gag so easily that they don’t feed normally and grow. It’s heartbreaking to think of this suffering when it all could be prevented. Many expectant mothers try to stay clean. The percentage of drug abusers is lower for pregnant women compared with the general population of women in their age group. Some, though, are simply too sick to do right by their babies or themselves. The long-term developmental toll prenatal drugs have on babies is still unknown. Plenty of research, however, shows that these children struggle not just as newborns, but often throughout their lives because their drug-abusing
parents expose them to violence, and neglect their care and nutrition. Punishing their mothers isn’t the best answer — as tempting as that might be. Members of the Indiana Attorney General’s Prescription Drug Abuse Task Force are lobbying to improve substance abuse and mental health programs, and education. These have proven a far better prescription for changing addicts’ behavior than prison. Incredibly, parts of Indiana today still lack good drug treatment. There’s a huge demand for increasing mental health services everywhere in Indiana. And the state still lags in its efforts on education. The answer to most of these needs: resources. Legislators will have to turn around their funding priorities if they intend to turn around Indiana’s predicament with drugaddicted newborns.
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