Staffing needs discussed by Diboll Board of Trustees

In a crowded meeting hall, filled with concerned citizens, parents, teachers and principals, the Diboll Independent School District Board of Trustees met recently to discuss several matters concerning Diboll schools. One of the items, according to the meeting notice, was the “reorganization of elementary administration,” “necessary reduction of force for administrative staff, including campus principals” and the “staffing needs and program changes for the 2007-2008 school year.”

Newly selected interim superintendent for DISD Brent Hawkins, explained the reorganization to those in attendance He said after meeting with the administration of the four campuses, he sees the reorganization to be in line with the direction in which the district needs to go.

The passing of those items met with both staunch support as well as objections from school board members with dissent coming from trustees Ronnie Coleman, Andrea Swor and Sandy Hendrick. The three agendas provided for the ability of the school board to dissolve the positions of the primary and elementary principals. In their stead, the school board would place a single principal to administrate all elementary education from pre-k through fifth grade. This position would require the person holding it to oversee administration of the two separate campuses with assistant principals and teacher/administrators working below him or her.

“It [the reorganization] sounds good on paper but I am not sure if it will work,” said longtime Diboll Primary educator and trustee Sandy Hendrick as she voiced her concerns for the strain placed on the district's teachers. She went on to say, “As soon as this idea was mentioned I started receiving phone calls from concerned teachers.” Hendrick, who worked for DISD as an educator at Diboll Primary for over 20 years, voted against the passing of the three items.

In support of the items board member Lynn Pavlic compared the position of one principal to be in charge of both the elementary and primary to a single person being in charge of multiple factories in the industrial world, stating it is possible for someone to do such a thing.

Another matter of concern for Board members was several maintenance issues, that according to Maintenance Director Craig Ruby, need to be dealt with as soon as possible. The issues at hand included either the replacement or repair of a chiller on the high school campus that would cost $85,000 to repair or $90,000 to $100,000 to replace. Ruby also said that several compressors at the high school were down resulting the campus working on less than half the power it was designed for. The matter of the compressors would lead to a very hot end to the spring semester and summer school unless something was done to fix the problem. The board set a future date in which to discuss the matter of repairs and alleviate the problem.

Principals from all four campuses gave their monthly reports to the board following a presentation of a Renaissance Learning Accelerated Reader video that outlined the districts plans to improve the reading levels of Diboll students. Reading and attendance were the focus of the reports made by the principals who all believe their campuses were progressing in a positive direction.