ST. MARYS — Moments after officially accepting the resignation of superintendent Shawn Brown because of him taking a position at the Auglaize County Educational Service Center, the St. Marys school board discussed the possibility of pulling out of that same organization.
The board accepted his resignation at a special meeting Wednesday, effective July 31. Brown’s new duties will begin Aug. 1 at the ESC. The current superintendent, Ann Harvey, will take the position as associate superintendent.
However, the board followed up that action by discussing a possible change with conducting business through an ESC.
Currently, the board has an agreement with the Auglaize ESC to provide psychology services, speech services, mental disability/handicapped services, preschool handicap services, emotionally disturbed and curriculum service. For those services, the district paid $1.11 million in 2014-15. An estimate for 2015-16 revealed that if the board went with the Mercer County ESC the district would pay $1.1 million for the same services, a modest savings of about $11,000.
Board member Ronda Shelby said that the board should consider staying because to the small difference.
“We are in Auglaize County, and we should support the county if it is fiscally responsible,” Shelby said.
The board made no decision on the issue and planned to bring the discussion back to the table during the October or November meeting. They plan to revisit both cost scenarios and how well services match up at each ESC.
“We should let them know by Jan. 1,” said board president Karl Dammeyer. “We will take another look at it in November.”
Dammeyer said in an earlier interview that the board would act quickly on finding Brown’s replacement because of him leaving in a little more than a month.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
