During their meeting earlier this week, the Eastern Pulaski School Board members were not in unanimous agreement when it came to the action to approve job descriptions. Superintendent Dan Foster spoke at length about the two proposed positions of technology data specialist and director of curriculum and assessment.
The position of technology data specialist was more or less just a clarification of title. Katie DeGroot was hired on last year under a secretary/ jack-of-all-trades position. Superintendent Foster said DeGroot will still maintain many of her current duties such as state reports and iPad insurance and billing. The one area where she will no longer be providing assistance is with textbooks. The board voted 5-1 on this portion of the agenda. Since the majority voted yes, the position was added and DeGroot will come on as technology data specialist during the 2015/16 school year.
The Director of Curriculum and Assessment was a position presented a previous board meeting. The topic was tabled and tweaked a bit and came back during this board meeting. The board was split 3-3 on this matter. Since there was no majority, the motion was not carried.
The disapproval of the second position presented came as a surprise to Superintendent Foster, “We talked about it in June and I didn’t really hear any negatives on it so we made a couple changes and brought it back and I didn’t get a chance to hear what the concerns were, so hopefully maybe over the next few weeks we can talk about that and see if there’s some particular concerns that I can address for the board.”
Foster said he plans to bring this proposal back to the board after it undergoes a bit more deliberation. This position would require a new hire and the person would be responsible for a number of things including grants, teacher assessments and vertical alignment of grades K through 12. The salary for this position could be paid out of grants and even allow for the school to potentially get some grants they aren’t currently receiving.
