Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat.
The school board of Venice School District 3 decided not to move forward with discussions to consolidate with Madison School District 12 at a special meeting the board held Wednesday evening.
Four of the seven members on each school board needed to have been interested for the merger proposal to continue. With the refusal of the Venice board, the proposal is dead.
The Madison District 12 board discussed the proposal at its July 18 regular meeting, according to the agenda. It’s unclear what the board’s decision was.
Representatives of neither district and school board could immediately be reached for comment Friday morning.
In mid-July, board members of the two school districts began considering the consolidation proposal during special meetings.
At those meetings, Ed Hightower, former longtime superintendent at Edwardsville District 7 and a consultant on the construction of a new elementary school in Venice, laid out the case in favor of a merger. He said it would improve the financial stability of the districts as well as the academic and co-curricular opportunities for students, among other things.
Madison County Regional Superintendent Robert Werden and the attorney representing both school districts, Barney Mundorf, were also at the meetings to outline the legal requirements for a consolidation and what the timeline for the districts would have been if they decided to pursue it.
“As leaders of the Madison and Venice Boards of Education, your commitment to making decisions that best serve your students, employees, and communities is commendable,” Hightower said in an email to both districts Thursday.
“As previously discussed with both boards, a majority consensus from each board was necessary to proceed with merger discussions,” he said. “Given the Venice Board’s decision, future consolidation discussions will cease.”
Venice 3 is currently building a new school to accommodate up to 160 students with a $26 million emergency construction grant from the state. The former school was condemned in 2020 due to structural issues.
The district serves students from pre-K through eighth grade and consists of an elementary school that enrolled about 67 students at the end of the 2023-24 school year.
The new school is part of a larger economic revitalization plan in Venice that includes a grocery store, health care clinic, a career and technical education center, 40 affordable homes and a funeral home.
Venice High School closed in 2004 with an enrollment of 58 after a voter referendum, according to past BND reporting.
Now, when Venice Elementary students graduate from eighth grade, they go on to either Madison Senior High School, East St. Louis Senior High School or Lovejoy Technology Academy, the high school in Brooklyn District 188. Venice 3 pays the tuition for its students to attend the high schools.
Madison 12 is a pre-K through 12th grade district with an elementary school and combined junior high and high school. Its enrollment was about 675 at the end of the 2023-24 school year.
Kelly Smits is a reporter with the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
