Clawson City Council, school board form joint task force

CLAWSON — The Clawson Public Schools Board of Education and the City Council are joining forces following the approval of a joint task force at the Dec. 19 City Council meeting.

The task force, proposed by Clawson Public Schools, will bring the council and the school board together for periodic meetings to discuss matters relating to both the schools and the city.

“There is immense community value and a priority to intentionally join forces to collaborate and ensure we move the Clawson community to ‘Grow Forward Together.’” Clawson Public Schools stated in its proposal.

Because “the district and city have the same taxpayers; we shall continually demonstrate to them the best use of all assets and services for their increased benefit,” the proposal states.

“Our school district cannot meet its greatest potential without a strong city, and our city cannot reach its ultimate potential without strong schools,” it said.

Clawson Public Schools Superintendent Billy Shellenbarger said he and Clawson City Manager Joseph Rheker have been working side by side for well over a year now, and the two decided it is time to bring the two entities together.

“It’s a very unique city,” Shellenbarger said. “We want to utilize that uniqueness to draw in families and keep families.”

To do this, the task force will be creating different initiatives to emphasize that uniqueness. The first task force meeting was scheduled for Jan. 8, after the Review went to press.

At the first meeting, Shellenbarger said, the school board and the council would be discussing the “collaboration, partnership, and some initiatives and thoughts about where we go from here in terms of trying to work together.”

One of the big discussions surrounding the Dec. 19 meeting was about the selling of Schalm Elementary School to a developer.

“We’re creating a central campus through our right-sizing initiative that came out of our 2021 bond, and that central campus will put all kindergarten through 12th graders on the same campus,” Shellenbarger said.

Schalm Elementary will be torn down to create houses, with the hopes of bringing in more families, Shellenbarger said.

The council also discussed this topic, with Rheker explaining the intentions behind tearing down Schalm.

“The school district is largely funded by the people they actually have in attendance in their school district,” Rheker said. “So being able to retain their current student population, and then grow it, that’s what the intention is.”

The discussion of this raised a lot of questions from multiple council members, but Mayor Paula Millan outlined the importance of conversation and talking about the different possibilities.

“There’s a lot of layers here,” Millan said. “The question today is, ‘Are we interested in talking about this?’ Because we had a lot of residents pose questions for the last couple of months, and we have not really taken the time to have a conversation.”

This is the type of conversation that will be continued in the joint task force committee.

Shellenbarger stated that the decisions will not be final until February, as they do not yet know the developer or how much Schalm will be sold for.