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March 9, 2003Maintaining the heart of NorthportNORTHPORT - The news wound its way quickly through homes, shops and school hallways.People were talking about it at Barb's Bakery on Mill Street and over at the post office. Northport school officials had asked the larger Traverse City Area Public Schools to consider annexing their community school. Residents learned that if the merger transpired, the Northport school district and its school board - made up of their neighbors, friends and family - would cease to exist. At the first opportunity, more than 200 residents gathered in the school gym to hear the plan out. The superintendent warned that without drastic change, the school would be shuttered in three years. If the 275-student district was annexed to Traverse City, residents could be assured the school's rich tradition, its buildings and sports teams would be around a while longer. But it wouldn't be Northport Public Schools. The community, which for 150 years had lavished time, labor and money on its school, was told that saving the school meant surrendering her, a proposition that had been uttered repeatedly years before. At the Feb. 27 meeting, lifelong natives such as Chris Irvine expressed the sentiments of many in the 1,300-person township. "It is beyond ludicrous to even think of this community without a school," he said. Support for Northport's school has changed little over the years. People still give a lot of their time and selves to help out. According to "A History of Leelanau Township," the first settlers sailed 30 miles to Traverse City several times in 1850 to get lumber for the school house. In 1855, the first public school in Leelanau County, Northport School District No. 1, officially organized. The frame building was the "social center," according to the history. By 1890, several additions to the school had been built. Fourteen years later a new two-story brick school was built. When the school's stairway needed repair in 1938, villagers donated lumber, pipe, tar paper and boxes of nails and did the work themselves. The brick school was closed in 1970 and leveled a year later. In its place, the present Northport school was built on Wing Street. That benevolent spirit shone brightly again in 2001, when residents raised more than $1 million in private donations to build a 450-seat auditorium. Northport Community Arts Center supporters say the auditorium with near-perfect acoustics is a modern-day testament to the intrinsic connection between town and gown. "It just seemed like a logical place to put it because we had the space," Joan Jackson said. "The school really is the focal point of the community." According to James Levy, a school board member from 1983 to 1999 and its president for 12 years, the district's history colors its present predicament. Levy knows of two attempts in the 1970s to consolidate, once with Leland and again with Suttons Bay. In both instances, Levy said Northport voters approved but the other schools turned down the measures. Northport tried again to consolidate in the early 1990s with Leland, but the results were the same as those two decades before. Levy believes people did not appreciate the financial advantages of a consolidation at the time. And the beginning of Northport's current troubles, according to Levy, was not far off. He said Proposal A, which reduced local property taxes by making school funding the responsibility of the state, was devastating to the district. Before Proposal A, Levy said the district was consistently one of the three best-funded schools in the state on a per-pupil basis. "For a long time, funding was not a matter of big concern, but those days are gone, and we knew they would be," he said. Marlin Bussey, a 1953 Northport graduate who came back to retire, said residents would do much to save the school. "Today, if it weren't for the state law, people would vote for a millage to tide them over," Bussey said. "In the past Northport has had strong support from the community." But the present afforded superintendent Richard Cross few options when he was hired in February 2001. He had to solve the district's financial problems while performing all the jobs of a small school administrator, from lunch duty to zipping up kindergartners' coats. The previous superintendent had left the district the summer before with a severely inflated budget, Cross said. That year, the district had planned for 340 students but only 280 enrolled. One of Cross's moves, done over a two-year period, was to cut the staff from 28 teachers to 18. "We don't offer a lot of classes out here, but I think we have good, strong, basic courses," Cross said. "If we have to go any further (with cuts), then I have serious concerns that we can't maintain a quality K-12 curriculum." Ultimately, Cross says, the community's decision should be about what is best for Northport students. And that is why he came up with the plan to unite his district with Traverse City. If the schools merged, teachers would get curriculum support. Administrators could assess student progress. Classes such as music, art, drama and other advanced courses could be offered, Cross said. Vicki Kehl, former president of the school board and a current member, said the community has always rallied behind the school. "I think a big benefit (of annexing) is keeping a school here in the community; that is very important," Kehl said. "A community needs a school just as much as the school needs a community."
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