By Rusty Nixon Correspondent
PLYMOUTH/BOURBON — After being named Best Buy Schools by the Indiana Chamber of Com-merce a year ago, Plymouth and Triton High Schools went back to the drawing board and came out a bigger winner for this year.

Tom Schuman, vice president of communications for the Indiana Chamber, was in Marshall County for most of the day to present Plymouth High School and Triton High School with an elite “Head of the Class” award as one of the top 10 educational bargains in the state of Indiana. The ranking is the highest achievement recognized by the Chamber.
The award of “Best Buy School” is given to the high schools in the state offering the highest educational achievement levels for the lowest amount of tax dollars spent. Both Triton and Plymouth made that list a year ago, and went a step further for 2009, cracking the state’s top 10 list.
“For 10 of the 11 years they've been doing this, Triton has made the top 100 10 times,” said Triton Jr. Sr. High School Principal Mike Chobanov. “That is out of 357 schools in the state – and this year we made the top 10.”
“One thing that really jumps out at you about Plymouth is the extremely high graduation rate of 85 percent,” said Schuman about the selection. “That’s significantly higher than the state average and there is a significantly lower expenditure of tax dollars per student. The state average is $10,100 per student and at Plymouth it’s $9,700.”
The schools in the state’s top 10 run the gamut from smallest to largest, urban to rural.
“The group is very diverse,” said Schuman. “We have Adams Central on the list that only has around 400 students and then also on the list is North Central in Indianapolis that is one of the state’s largest schools.”
Plymouth Principal Jim Condon called the honor, “…humbling and at the same time a great reinforcement for the students, faculty and the entire community that is committed to do whatever it takes to give their kids the best educational experience possible.”
Condon gave those three groups the highest praise for the achievement.
“Those are the people (students and faculty) that are the ones that make it happen,” said Condon. “They are the ones that are together when that classroom door closes. Of course, it really takes the whole community and their support and total involvement to make it happen. You have to have ownership by all those involved in the process to make it work.”
“We bring in the best staff that we can afford, provide professional development that meets the needs of our staff, and try to continuously look for opportunities that will produce educational achievement,” said Chobanov.