School Board Approves Creation of Special Education Director Position

Oskaloosa Community School Administration

by Amy Langdon

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Oskaloosa School District will soon hire a special education director. The school board voted Tuesday to approve the creation of the position.

Superintendent Russ Reiter said the position will be part time and pay approximately $30,000. He added that adding the position could potentially save the district money.

Every year, the district receives a set amount of money from the state to educate each student. But it costs more than that amount to educate a student with special needs. The special education deficit is the difference between how much the district spends to educate special ed students and how much the district receives from the state. The deficit this year was approximately $500,000; last year, it was around $443,000. Reiter said hiring a special education director could help decrease this deficit.

“Decreasing that deficit is going to take a lot of time, a lot of work, and we want to make sure we’re good stewards of taxpayer money, and trying to decrease that the best we can,” Reiter said.

The meeting also handled some administration issues. The board voted to re-appoint Susan Boxler as president of the board. Laurie Fiscella will serve as vice president. The board also voted to move the start time of school board meeting to 7:00 on Tuesday evenings.

In other school board business, the board:

– Extended the deadline to receive bids for sale of student-constructed home to October 31. Reiter said the house has only been on the market for about a week and half so he suggested allowing more time before decreasing the minimum bid price of $165,000.

– Approved annual re-appointment of district’s bank and legal counsel.

– Appointed Board Member Charlie Comfort as this year’s delegate to the Iowa Association of School Boards Assembly.

– Approved the district issuing individual procurement cards to some employees and departments. Reiter said there’d be limits to how much could be charged on the credit cards and what kind of purchases can be made, i.e. fuel and lodging. The district currently has one credit card, which Reiter said gets passed around frequently. Reiter said by giving some employees their own credit cards, it will be easier to track and record spending.

– Approved the organization of a high school trip to Washington, D.C. The trip would not be formally sponsored by the school district so it wouldn’t use any taxpayer money, but it did need the board’s permission to promote the event.

Posted by on Oct 10 2012. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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