COAL TOWNSHIP - The Shamokin Area School Board cast split votes in agreeing to take over the special education program at Northwestern Academy and to ratify an agreement to cut administrative salaries and benefits.
Board members also voted unanimously to adopt a tentative budget of $30.3 million for next school year.
The moves are estimated to trim $760,000 from the remaining budget deficit, according to statements by board
members and administrators - a deficit estimated at $2.7 million during a budget review prior to Tuesday's voting session.
The district will take over special education at Northwestern Academy, a juvenile detention facility in Coal Township, next school year.
Superintendent James Zack said during the meeting that the choice was a tough one. If the district didn't take over the program, programs like family consumer science and mathematics tutoring would be in jeopardy.
"They're all tough choices and none of them are good," he said.
Staff transferred to the facility will remain district employees, Zack said after the meeting.
In protest
School districts are required by law to pay for the education of students who live within their boundaries. When it comes to juvenile detention facilities, those districts remain responsible for students remanded by court to a place like Northwestern.
By taking over the special education program at the academy, Zack said the district would realize savings since the majority of district staff working there would have their salaries covered by the payments made by the home school districts.
A half-dozen teachers aides who attended the meeting to protest the move.
"Seriously guys, I make $8.75 an hour and you're going to make up the budget with that? Come on," Brenda Guzik, a teacher aide, said in disgust during the meeting.
They said of 15 aides who recently underwent two weeks of training at the facility, no more than three would want to work at Northwestern Academy, citing safety concerns as their biggest fear.
Apart from being called derogatory names and feeling fearful in the detention facility environment, Beth Sheriff said one juvenile offender was caught "pleasuring himself" while staring at another aide.
"My experience was ... horrible. I was very scared while in that classroom," said Sharon Dudanowicz.
Jen Ressler asked but did not receive an answer as to whether or not teachers aides would have a choice of either transferring to Northwestern Academy or remaining in the traditional classroom atmosphere at Shamokin Area.
After the meeting, Zack said that issue remained to be determined.
"You can have my raise. I don't care. Take it. Just let me have my job," Ressler said of hoping to remain at a district school building.
The aides, a facility teacher and several board members all agreed that people should not be forced to work at the academy, saying it takes a certain mind set and desire to work in such an atmosphere.
"It's a great place to work at if you can take it, but it's not fair to force someone to go there," said Melissa Amato, who identified herself as a teacher at Northwestern Academy.
"You have to have the will to want to be there," said Tracey Witmer, school board president.
Bob Getchey, board member, asked the aides if they'd rather collect unemployment or work at the academy. That drew raucous boos from the audience, but he said he had to ask, saying that more staff furloughs are a possibility while the board works to trim the remaining budget deficit.
The vote
It was unclear how many staff members would transfer to Northwestern Academy, or exactly whom. Zack said after the meeting that it remained to be determined.
Board member Brian Persing estimated in January that the move would involved between 35 and 40 jobs - a principal, a special education coordinator, a guidance counselor, a jobs coach, teachers, aides and secretaries.
While the vote on the budget elicited virtually no response from a crowd of more than 100 in the high school auditorium, the votes on the administrative contract and the academy program drew the ire of many in the audience.
Getchey, Persing and board members LaRue Beck, Ed Griffiths and Jeff Kashner voted in favor of the move. Their votes defeated the four dissenters - Witmer, Ron McElwee, Charlie Shuey and Bernie Sosnoskie.
McElwee said too many questions remain as to whether state Department of Education would allow education subsidies academy students' home districts to pay aides' salaries if the district took over.
Shuey said the administration of Northwestern Academy itself opposes the move, citing complaints made by aides, saying academy administrators believe it could present a security risk.
He said there could also be litigation brought by unions regarding a "change of duties."
Act 93
The vote to approve a memorandum to a contract for district administration, Act 93, was less lopsided.
Beck, Getchey, Griffiths, Kashner, McElwee, Persing and Witmer voted in favor. Shuey and Sosnoskie opposed.
The memorandum would affect the district's 12 administrators. They agreed to forego a 5 percent raise in 2012-13 called for in the Act 93 contract.
They also agreed to pay 1-percent of their annual salary toward health benefits, for which they currently make no contributions, and reduce an annual medical stipend from $4,000 to $1,500.
Shuey remained critical of the move, saying the concessions weren't nearly enough and that more should be made, much to the pleasure of the far majority in attendance.
He said the majority of the savings come through a retirement and demotion.
That demotion involving Ruby Michetti, curriculum coordinator, is under litigation, he said, and could impact just how much savings are realized if the demotion is denied.
Griffiths called Shuey a "flip-flopper" and "grandstander." He said Shuey agreed to the concessions made by administrators when the terms were reached but changed face to please Tuesday's crowd.
Shuey said his prior approval was tentative on that all administrators agree to the terms. Since one is fighting it - Michetti had a hearing with the board Monday, at which her demotion was upheld - he changed his mind.
While Witmer voted in favor of the move, saying the concessions are "a start," she seemed hesitant.
"Right now, we don't know where else to go despite wiping our hands clean and letting the state come in," she said. "If I could do it, I'd cut a couple administrators, but I'm only one person. ... One person can't do that."
Getchey, too, said he voted in favor of the memorandum since the cuts were "a start."