Staff reductions long considered

— A total of 10 positions were eliminated after a one-hour executive session and a unanimous vote by the board at this month’s School Board meeting held Monday, April 12.

The positions eliminatedinclude four special education aides, three full-time substitute teachers, one in-school suspen-sion supervisor and two instructional aides.

Pea Ridge Schools superintendent Mike Van Dyke said the matter was discussed as a personnel matter in executive session.

Intermediate School principal Anita Wood was called into the closed session.

“We had a question, I really can’t say about what, it’s privileged information.

It was personnel,” Van Dyke said.

The reasons the positions were eliminated varied between them. Van Dyke said the special education aides are no longer needed, as some of the catastrophic students Pea Ridge once had in attendance have moved to other school districts, eliminating the need for one-onone instruction.

The district currently has six special education aides and one that is certified to assist hearing impaired students. Two aides were eliminated from the Intermediate School and two from the Middle School.

Instructional aides arehired based on student counts. They can be brought in to classrooms to reduce the teacher-tostudent ratio if numbers increase, allowing the district to keep from hiring teachers mid-year, Van Dyke said. Currently, the district has seven instructional aides, losing one due to expired contract and one from the Middle School.

Having full-time substitute teachers on staff was something the district started four or five years ago, said Van Dyke.

“We had a lot of absenteeism with teachers, it was in our best interest to have someone on staff without having to call (for a substitute).

“It didn’t work very well, we didn’t foresee that we really didn’t have anything for them to do at the first of the year in particular. We tried sending some of theaides from one building to other positions, but that didn’t work either,” he said.

The district is now working with substitute teachers on an as-need basis. The Primary, Intermediate andMiddle schools each lost a full-time substitute.

“We’re trying to work on some things there with scheduling, trying to revamp how we notify subs building by building. We’re having better luck now getting subs than we were three or four years ago, people are wanting to come in and teach,” Van Dyke said.

He said the district will save about $150,000 by eliminating these positions.

“Basically (the money) will be in the operating fund, anything we use for operational expenses. We have line items for subs, we’ll budget for each building.

“I don’t know if it cameout (in the meeting), but we are offering and have offered these individuals part-time positions with benefits, we’re trying to work with these individuals ... they will have opportunity for a hearing and so forth.

“Cutting positions is difficult, but we’re being good stewards of tax payers’ money and being sure we need those positions.

We’ve been visiting this for months,” he said.

According to the district’s reduction in force policy, positions that come open in the district will first be offered to those whose positions were eliminated, on the basis of seniority.

News, Pages 1 on 04/21/2010