Yankton School Board: Health Cost Options Get Close Scrutiny
Specht Named New President
By Andrew Atwal
andrew.atwal@yankton.net
The board held its annual reorganization at its meeting on Monday, with Chris Specht moving from vice president to president, and Jim Fitzgerald taking the role of vice president for the 2012-13 school year. In addition, Matthew Pietz was sworn in as a school board member, replacing Verlin Ailts, who is retiring from the board.
“It’s very exciting to be on the school board,” Pietz said. “I’m anxious to get to work and hopefully get past the budget issues we’ve been having.”
He added that one of his focuses will be getting better technology for students to learn from and use in their classroom activities.
“I’m focused on educating students in the very best way we can,” he added.
Specht, who replaces Kathy Greeneway as board president, said the school board will continue to try to provide the best education possible for the children in the Yankton School District.
“This has been a challenging last year for everybody, not just the board, but the community and YSD’s employees,” he said. “Even as president, I still have just one vote and still need to work.”
He noted that there are very important issues facing the district in this coming year, including the new drug and alcohol counselor, school funding, achievement levels, absentee rates, among others.
One agenda item that was discussed in detail at the meeting was the potential for new administrative services for the YSD health plan for its employees.
The YSD health plan currently operates under a two-tier system — either a single employee plan or a family plan. A new option is to change to the four-tier system — single employee, single employee and spouse, single parent, or family options.
The school district also has the option of changing administrative providers altogether, which could save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Paula Weydert, president of the Yankton Education Association (YEA), spoke on behalf of the YSD employees’ about the options.
“We’d rather just keep what we have,” she said. “It’s not a problem that needs to be fixed.”
She did add that she would be in favor of moving from the two- to four-tier system.
The board also approved reinstating two library aide positions for the elementary schools. Two years ago, each elementary school in the district had a full-time library aide in its building — positions that were cut last year due to budget constraints. The proposal reinstates a halftime library aide at each of the elementary schools for the upcoming school year.
YSD Superintendent Dr. Joseph Gertsema said its a good starting point in bringing these positions back, but would prefer to have four positions full so each elementary school has its own full-time library aide.
Another agenda item included the unveiling of the potential 2012-13 school budget.
Because of the continued decrease in enrollment at YSD, the new budget is a $1.1 million decrease from where it was last year, which is equivalent to about a 9.4 percent change.
Some of the ways the board was able to save money including tapping into the health care savings reserves established by the district, cutting some funding for school activities, and not filing vacated teachers’ positions.
“The health plan reserves have been a fundamental savior to the budget,” YSD business manager Jason Bietz said. “Without the reserve, more cuts would have been needed.”
He noted that the health plan is a significant portion of the general fund, so the review process could save the district a significant amount of money, if it chooses to change administrative providers.
“We can’t deficit-spend forever,” he said. “We are listening to the public and are addressing their concerns brought forward.”
“Because we’re funded by the number of students we have, when student enrollment continues to drop, you need to cut back,” Specht said. “However, the public should not have too many concerns about this potential budget and we are looking at more ways to further reduce spending, including changes to the health plan.”
The board plans on voting on a budget for the upcoming school year at its Sept. 10 meeting.
In other business, the board designated the Yankton Press and Dakotan as the official newspaper for the 2012-13 YSD proceedings. This was originally slated as a consent item, but Dave Baumeister of the Missouri Valley Observer opposed. Despite the opposition, the board approved the proposal 4-1.
The next school board meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. Aug. 13 in the YSD administration building at 2410 West City Limits Road.
You can follow Andrew Atwal on Twitter at twitter.com/andrewatwal
By Andrew Atwal 