School Board Awaits New Superintendent To Tackle Topics

Oskaloosa Community School District Board Meeting. Photo by Hailey Brown

By Hailey Brown

(Oskaloosa, Iowa) – The Oskaloosa Community School District Board of Directors had a shorter meeting than usual on Tuesday, due in part to the upcoming transition of a new superintendent as of July 1, 2018. Approval of academic goals, approval of security camera system requests for proposals, as well as approval of 2018-19 parent/student handbooks were stricken from the agenda at the beginning of the meeting. Superintendent Russ Reiter was not present.

“I would assume our new superintendent would like to have at least a look at [these items], and until July 1 she has no authority to do anything,” explained board member Carl Drost. Drost then made a motion to have items #7, #9, and #18 removed from the agenda.

Also taken from the agenda were items #23 and #24 – a closed session to discuss and consider an employee appointment.

“The scheduling was not able to make that happen tonight so we will not be doing those,” explained board president Shelly Herr.

The Board proceeded on a number of other pressing issues, which included public comment from Julie Knox of Oskaloosa, a mother of two boys, one of whom graduated in 2017 and another with special needs, who just finished 11th grade in the district. Knox said her son did well up until middle school, and a lack of resources left them with few options for his education.

“I am here this evening to implore the school board to seriously consider hiring a special education advocate for our district,” Knox said. “I believe that if you had an advocate… a majority of the problems we had, and others I am personally aware of [have had], would not happen.”

Approved items during this session included: middle school science curriculum, declaring surplus property and authorizing sale, adoption of nutrition director sharing agreement, wages for employees, a 28E lease of business property (SEIDA), another 28E lease agreement of business property (Oskaloosa Preschool Partners), an agreement of services with the Mahaska County YMCA, a cooperative sharing agreement for 2018-19 with Oskaloosa Christian for sports (up to 8th grade), renewal of membership in the Iowa Association of School Boards, a breakdown of the insurance policy, a property and casualty insurance policy, and a number of personnel changes.

All of the current school board members were present for this meeting, as well as OCSD Board Secretary Chad Vink, who was available to answer a number of questions in Reiter’s absence.