A statement from Muncie Community Schools says if the local teachers’ association gets its way in contract negotiations, the district will have to close five schools.  IPR’s Stephanie Wiechmann reports.

The Muncie Community Schools statement says it’s responding to an Indianapolis TV report that said the district has already decided to close Northside Middle School.  The statement says this decision has not been made.

But it then reveals that if the district loses its bid to control the new teacher’s contract, it will need to close “at least five schools.”  This includes Northside Middle School and four unnamed elementary schools.

MCS is facing a multi-million dollar budget deficit and the calculations about how much money the school needs to find is, as Superintendent Steve Baule explained earlier this week, a moving target.

“We had about an $11.5 million structural deficit last year. And we started looking, you know, after we got our State Board of Accounts audit back that said we also had about $10 million in unpaid bills.  And then we also had general obligation money, which hadn’t been used appropriately.  In a very conservative estimate, we’ve overspent about $42 million since 2007.”

MCS and the teachers’ association do not agree on how deep in debt the district is or how many cuts are needed.  Each side made final offers for the next teacher’s contract with their own preferred numbers in a four-hour public hearing held this month.  A state-assigned “fact finder” will now decide which contract offer to choose by the beginning of April.

The district’s statement says if the teachers’ offer is chosen by the state, officials will make a decision on which buildings to close sometime in May.