Greene Co. superintendent search draws interest from 23 applicants

By Rick Morain
Jefferson Herald

The Greene County Community School District received 23 applications for the Greene County superintendent position. Superintendent Tim Christensen announced in January that he will be leaving the position at the end of the district’s fiscal year on June 30.
Finalists would be interviewed by the GC school board and the designated “stakeholder” committees the last week of March, with a target date of March 31 to offer a contract to the applicant selected for the superintendent position. That’s a week earlier than originally planned.
The Greene County Community School Board of Education on March 9 tweaked the search schedule.
Under the new schedule, the board will meet Wednesday, March 23, to review the top applicants brought forward by the board’s search consultants. The board expects that review to be conducted in closed session, as permitted by the Iowa Code.
Expectations are that the board will review six or seven applicants and trim the list to two, three or four finalists. The finalists’ names would then be announced when the board comes back into open session at the end of the March 23 meeting.
Also on March 23, the administrative and classified salaries committee will meet to propose salaries for those positions for the 2022-23 school year.
At the March 9 meeting, the board voted to ratify the 2022-23 negotiated agreement between the Greene County Education Association (teachers’ union) and the board. The settlement increases the base salary, for a beginning teacher with a bachelor’s degree, to $33,350 from the current $32,760. The base salary is the figure from which all salaries on the “grid” are computed.
The salary schedule has a built-in four percent raise each year for all returning teaching staff members who are not “at the bottom of their lane.”
The negotiated agreement will increase the district’s cost, assuming all current teachers return in the fall with no additional college level hours, by $301,609, or 3.68 percent above the current agreement cost.
The GCEA teachers also have ratified the agreement.
The board voted to issue teacher continuing contracts, including any extra days, extra duty and coaching contracts. The teacher leadership contracts will be considered at a later date.
• Superintendent Christensen also presented the proposed fiscal year 2022-23 district budget, which begins July 1. The budget proposed both a lower property tax levy rate and a lower income surtax rate. The proposed levy rate is $14.42 per thousand dollars of taxable valuation, down 13 cents or about one percent from the current $14.55 levy rate. The proposed income surtax rate would be nine percent, down by one-quarter from this year’s 12 percent surtax rate.     
Property valuations are up for the year on which the coming fiscal year’s school budget is proposed. Actual dollars proposed to be raised by property taxes for the school district next fiscal year total $9,104,130, an increase of $595,391 or about seven percent over the current year’s $8,505,739.
The proposed reduction in the income surtax would cut the dollars raised thereby to $423,862 from the current year’s $521,633, a decrease of $97,771 or about 19 percent. Christensen had received concerns from district residents about the 12 percent income surtax rate.
The total dollar amount raised from local taxes (property and income) for the Greene County School District next fiscal year would be up by $497,620, or about 4 ½ percent from the current fiscal year.
Local taxes comprise about one-third of the district’s budgeted revenue. The bulk of the remainder comes from financial support from the state of Iowa.
The school district’s budget must be certified to the Greene County auditor by April 15. A public budget hearing is required before the board can approve it. The board’s regular monthly meeting date is the third Wednesday of every month; in April that would be April 20, too late to meet the April 15 certification date. The board’s April meeting will be moved up a week, to Wednesday, April 13, and the budget hearing and official consideration of the proposed budget will take place at that meeting.
In addition to next year’s budget, the board set the date of the April 13 meeting for a public hearing on an amendment to the current 2021-22 year’s budget, due to this year’s receipt of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds and the pending purchase of equipment from the district’s nutrition fund.
Increases proposed for the current budget include $500,000 in both the instruction and support services, $200,000 in non-instructional programs, and $700,000 in “other” expenditures. The proposed amendment was approved for official publishing.

• In Iowa, “teacher retention payments” of $1,000 were directed by Governor Kim Reynolds through the Iowa Department of Education in January. Those payments are available only to full-time in-person classroom teachers. So the school board on March 9 voted to extend “staff retention payments” from the district’s federal ESSER funds to staff members not receiving the teacher retention payments.
The payments will be made to all active staff members, as a $1,000 one-time payment for full-time contracted support staff, as well as certified staff, including administrators, not receiving the teacher retention payment ordered by the Governor, and $500 for part-time (contracted and non-contracted) employees. Full-time employees hired after Oct. 1, 2021, are also eligible for $500. All of those employees must offer their assurance by April 1 that they will continue their employment with the Greene County district at least through the end of the 2021-22 school year. Non-teaching staff members hired only for coaching positions or as substitute teachers are not eligible.
The payments will be made from available ESSER funds on April 20. The motion authorizing the payments stated they are being made “due to districtwide and statewide staff shortages, and in anticipation of continuing shortages, along with increased responsibilities for all staff due to ongoing pandemic mitigation, and to reinforce our desire to retain current employees.”

ITEMS OF NOTE
•    In other action, the board approved the hiring of Michelle Dolder as middle school boys’ track coach, Victoria Anderson as a high school special education teacher, and Alex Morales Gomez as a custodian.
•  The board discussed proposed changes to the district’s graduation requirements. Superintendent Christensen suggested more changes to the proposed policy and asked that final approval of the policy be postponed until the regular April meeting. The board agreed to do so.
    Christensen also suggested a change in the district’s school driving permit process: to have students come to the board for approval in order to explain their need for the permit and to understand the guidelines associated with the school permit. The signature on the state school license form needed for issuance of the license by the Iowa Department of Transportation (IDOT) will be that of the board president.
• The board approved a quotation from Drees Co. of $34,410 for high school parking lot lighting. Technology director Brent Gerzema asked the board to delay approval of the elementary security cameras purchase.
Gerzema also discussed the process for E-Rate equipment purchases. He had received only one bid for the purchase of eight Aruba switches, the cost of which would be reimbursed 70 percent with E-Rate funding. The board authorized him to approve an equipment bid at his discretion as presented.
• The board approved a fundraiser request for youth track meets from varsity track coaches Derek Merk and Chad Morton.
• Christensen informed the board that summer externships are available to interested teachers, with six teachers interested in the program so far. Participants will be paid $1,000 each out of the teacher quality and professional fund for their week-long work with a local business this summer to learn how math, science, technology and other strands are used in a particular business. They would then bring that knowledge back to their classrooms.
• Stormy Fish and fourth grade students raised more than $600 for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital with bracelet sales.
• The board reviewed district policies covering the board itself, approving slight revisions to some of them. One was to note that policies are available electronically on the board website, and another set the board’s annual meeting date after Aug. 31 rather than Aug. 1.

RESIGNATIONS     
The board approved the resignations of two retiring teachers eligible for payment of up to 90 days of sick leave at the level of substitute teacher pay, which is $135 per day. Julie Neal has 35 years of tenure and Traci Beger 33 years. The board commended both for their service to the school districts.

Kindergarten teacher Denise Kennedy appealed to the board on the denial to her of voluntary retirement benefits, which pay up to 90 days of unused sick leave at $135 per day. Greene County School District policy requires an employee to reach a minimum age of 55 by June 30, to complete at least 10 years of service, and to submit the application by Feb. 28, all in the year of retirement. Kennedy is retiring after the current school year.
While Kennedy meets two of the requirements, having taught here many more years than the 10-year minimum, she will not turn 55 until September. The voluntary retirement benefits are paid with the district’s management fund dollars. To meet the Iowa Code’s requirement that the benefits be paid from management funds, the employee must be 55 by July 1.
After discussion the board voted to deny the appeal, commended Kennedy for her years of service, and told her she will be missed. The board noted that two other teachers were also ineligible for the benefits for a similar reason.