Greene County School District is going to have a full band staff going into the 2016-17 school year.
Last week, the School Board approved to hire a middle school band director. The decision came after the negotiated agreements with the bus driver’s union and the Greene County Education Association, plus increases in pay for the administrative and classified positions were settled. Other factors include retirements, resignations, reductions in force, breakdown in insurance, reduction in overtime, reduction in seasonal help and position changes.
Superintendent Tim Christensen says the district wanted to save about $525,000 and after all budget items were finalized, the district is actually $29,941 ahead of that goal going into next school year.
“After settling all of the negotiations, we are where we want to be in terms of the budget savings and did make a decision to move forward with hiring a middle school band teacher. Again the caveat to that would be the goal of the future of sharing that person with potentially Paton-Churdan.”
The Board voted 5 to 2, with President Teresa Hagen and Mike Dennhardt as the two “no” votes, to hire the band teacher. The current director, Hanna Sundberg, resigned because she is getting married and moving to Des Moines.
As of last week, there were ten applications for the position.