A pair of agenda items at the most recent meeting of the Washington School Board centered on changes to staff through early retirement and resignations. Those participating in the offered early retirement program include: Curriculum Director Veta Thode, District custodians David Adrian, Bill Ebert and Martin Tapia, Data Services Technician Steve Jones, High School ELL teacher Beth Swift, Middle School teachers Toni Adrian and Craig McClenahan, Lincoln teachers Ross Anderson, Mark Berhow, Steve Green, Julie Hill, Lori Olson and Renee Sieren and Stewart teachers Jean Knowles and Peggy Litchfield. Washington Superintendent Willie Stone with KCII News about the departures and how it affects the district. Stone said, “We had 20 staff members waive their 45 day time period and decide to retire early. I know there’s been questions like ‘why are we doing this?’ Budget-wise, we are going to start rolling backward with our spending authority and before we do that we want to make sure we take steps so it doesn’t happen. We’re anticipating being able to save about $500,000 by offering early retirement. That makes it so we don’t have to cut programming. I wish we could keep the staff we have. That makes it a kind of bittersweet thing, because we have great people who work here and we have a lot of valuable experience that’s helping our students. At the same time, if we’re unable to offer programming, because our budget starts to go backward, then it hurts our students. This is kind of the lesser of the two evils. We’re excited about what those staff members will be able to do and how they’ll move forward in retirement, but, we’re also anticipating doing some work to get those positions filled.”
Other staffing changes on the agenda included nine staff resignations, some of which were certified staff, a pair of transfers and three new district hires. Washington School Board President Eric Turner talked about the difficulties that face Washington, or any district, related to certified resignation and what their recourse is. “We had a really good discussion about certified staff resignations. We have had two instances where a certified staff member has submitted a resignation and the board has denied those resignations. Currently, under the law, that staff member is still allowed to move on to what they want to do next as long as they’re not moving on to another public school position. The school is obligated to turn their name into the Board of Education and the Board can suspend their license. It puts the district and our students in a challenging position, right in the middle of the year. Anytime we have all seven board members comment on a topic, it’s really important. Basically, there’s not a lot that we can do right now, but, we do want to move forward and speak to our representatives in the legislature and maybe there is something that can be done to help protect school districts.”
The next meeting of the Washington School Board is scheduled for December 14th.