At its annual reorganization meeting Monday night, the Yankton School District (YSD) school board elected Jim Fitzgerald as the new president, while re-electing Kathy Greeneway to the vice president position.

Fitzgerald said he’ll enter the presidential post with no set agenda and looks forward to continuing to serve the district in a new capacity on the board.

New school board member Sarah Carda was also sworn to the board with a three-year term.

“Like I said during the elections, I’m really looking forward to learning a lot while serving on the board,” she said.

YSD superintendent Wayne Kindle, attending his first meeting in his new post, recognized outgoing school board member Chris Specht for his 16 years of service to the school district.

“Chris did a lot of good things for the district, staff members and students,” Kindle said. “I want to congratulate him for a good 16 years on the school board.”

Board members also discussed the preliminary 2013-14 school budget, which will be voted on in September.

“State law requires a preliminary budget to be presented in May,” Kindle said. “Law also requires there be a public hearing on the budget, which is what we did today. Budgets must be approved by October.”

The YSD budget includes a one-time money allocation of $284,000 for YSD, which was approved by the Legislature.

The budget also calls for an increase in pay to staff members across the board. However, the Yankton Education Association (YEA) and YSD board members are still negotiating the terms of the pay raise.

“Compared to last year, this budget includes 12 months of health premiums paid for, in comparison to six months last year,” Kindle said. “The budget also calls for an increase of about 35 percent in water spending, due to some issues the City is having with water treatment.”

The preliminary budget also includes a decrease in utility expenses due to a law that allows districts in the state to use parts of the capital outlay fund to pay for utility costs.

YSD business manager Jason Bietz said the district has been able to save money due in part to a few very successful programs.

“The early retirement program has been extremely beneficial to the budget,” he said. “It’s successful in terms of quantifiable payback to the district. In addition to early retirement, we’ve had significant savings through attrition.”

Board members also heard a proposal from Yankton Basketball Incorporated (YBI) about a donation of statistic boards for the Yankton High School (YHS) gym.

Buddy Hovland of YBI said the group wants to make a donation to help the district and gym.

“YBI is currently active in promoting basketball to the youth of the Yankton area,” Hovland said. “We would like to donate stat boards to the district, which would go right next to the big scoreboard in the Summit Center gym. This would bring YHS up to grade with other schools across the area.”

The donation of the boards would cost YBI about $17,000. However, it would cost the district, or another outside group, around $5,000 to install the boards.

Because of the $5,000 cost, board members tabled the proposal to the August school board meeting in hopes of finding an outside group to donate the $5,000 to have the boards installed.

At the end of the meeting, board members met in executive session. No action was expected to be taken.

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