Welcome to our new website!
Please note that for a brief period we will be offering complimentary access to the full site. No login is currently required.
If you're not yet a subscriber, click here to subscribe today, and receive a 10% discount.

Sitka School Board Approves Staff Hires

Posted

By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
    A week and a half after passing an initial budget for fiscal year 2025, the Sitka School Board held a special meeting Thursday to approve contracts for certificated staff and hire an assistant superintendent for the district office and an assistant principal at Blatchley Middle School.
    In passing its budget earlier this month, the board had provided funding for the those positions but didn’t issue contracts staffing them. A search had been underway for a Blatchley assistant principal and an assistant superintendent, and Thursday’s vote affirmed the hiring of the board’s choices for those positions.
    By adding two administrative positions, board president Tristan Guevin said, the district will reduce burnout and smooth operations.
    “We discovered the negative impact of not having that (assistant superintendent) position for several years when we did not,” Guevin said prior to the vote. “That included some findings on our audits around reporting and such on federal programs and other grants, impacted some of our draw-downs and ability to stay on top of those grants that are funding a number of certificated positions and just I think also capacity, knowing that district office, the superintendent, business manager, learning support director and others, were just having to put in far too much time and getting burned out.”
    Board member Todd Gebler agreed, saying the district suffered when those positions were unfilled.
    “Definitely happy to see it there. I know of the problems the last two years not having them,” he said.
    Speaking from the public, Blatchley principal Ben White said he was grateful the board chose to fill the administrative positions.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    The current BMS assistant principal, Diana Fulton, will be the assistant superintendent, while Keith Shelton, outgoing principal of the John Apangalook School in Gambell, has been chosen for the BMS assistant principal job. While the board approved the contracts and hirings unanimously, Burdick questioned why an outside candidate was selected, rather than a local person.
    “I do have a question about why we’re hiring outside when we’re laying off local folks? Seems like we have lots of strong players within the district,” Burdick said.
    While teachers now have their contracts in hand, there remains some shuffling to be done within the district, Superintendent Deidre Jenson informed the board.
    “We’re going to have a lot of conversations this week about where staff will be moving to because it’s a very complicated chess piece,” Jenson said. “We’re going to probably send an email out as soon as we send out formal notifications and kind of frame what those moves were based on looking at certification, least impact on a building, on a program.”
    She hopes to send that information out today, and, replying to a question from Burdick, said schools are in the process of building their schedules for the fall, which has adjusted some pupil-to-teacher ratio estimates.
    “We’re getting close to building the schedule a little bit more. And when you start placing placeholders for teacher preps, that wasn’t really accounted for in the earlier one,” she said. “So you have to kind of take out those teacher preps and then you get a larger number of kids in classes because you have to cover those prep times.”
    The School Board adopted a budget based on the assumption of a $500 increase in the base student allocation. The Legislature and the governor have indicated that an amount higher than that will likely be approved by the end of the legislative session May 15.
    Under the current plan, average pupil-to-teacher ratio at Xóots Elementary will be 18 kids per teacher; at Keet Gooshi Heen that will rise to 23; at Blatchley 24; at Sitka High 27; at Pacific High 15. Under the old FY24 budget, PTRs in the district ranged from a low of 14 at Pacific High School and 15 at Xóots to 20 at Sitka High, but fiscal shortfalls pushed the board to authorize a budget that trimmed 16 staff positions earlier this month. At the moment, Jenson said, the district is down 18 staff members including retirements and resignations.
    The board voted to delay a vote on a food services contract for next school year, as NANA Management Services has yet to reply to district requests for a bid. The board will take up the matter at the next meeting.
    Board member Tom Williams asked if the district has “a contingency if we don’t get a contract.”
    Jenson said she intends to apply for a food-related grant in the coming month, and the district could put out a request for proposals, though that would need to happen soon.
    “We might get a bid, it might be much higher. It might be; it might not be,” she said.
    Jenson said she would like to see a reply from NANA in the coming week. Guevin noted the district has an option to renew the current food services contract at about a 4.5 percent increase for one additional year.
    “In terms of the risk of not getting this, this is why I’d like to just sign that extension at the 4.5 percent. I recognize the food isn’t as great as we would like, but to me the risk is we don’t have a food program at all,” Guevin said. “And we have 30 plus percent of our students who are on free or reduced lunch who aren’t getting even that basic level of nutrition. And there’s requirements as far as USDA in terms of what is provided and so we know that there’s some level of nutritional value.”
    Williams asked about requirements surrounding food programs in schools, and also said reports on the quality of NANA’s food have been poor.
    “Given the feedback we’ve received about the quality of the food, what is the downside of not having the food’s contract? … What if we didn’t have a program? Do we have to have a lunch program?” he asked.
    School food programs meet a variety of federal and state guidelines, Jenson replied, and Sitka could risk losing reimbursement if those are not met, and if food was provided only to kids who qualify for free or reduced lunch, that would allow for possible discrimination against those students.
    By signing a contract extension, Jenson said, the district could spend a year working on an in-house food option.
    “This would give us this year to kind of transition into possibly taking it on and we’ve got the one-year possible extension,” the superintendent said. “So we take it on and plan for next year. And then we do it right and do some work. This grant kind of allows us a little bit of opportunity,” Jenson said. Answering a question from Burdick, she affirmed the postponement of the vote will not inhibit the district’s ability to feed students in the coming school year.
    The next board meeting is set for June 19, but board members raised the possibility of a special meeting prior to that to settle the food services issue.