The Jane Mianowski Conference Room at Cook County High School was filled with students at the April 18, 2013 ISD 166 school board meeting, determined to convince the school board to keep Bryan Hackbarth and his school counseling position.
At the March meeting, the board had voted to eliminate the job, although Superintendent Beth Schwarz assured them that they could add it back.
Colton Thompson presented a petition signed by 140 students asking the board to reinstate the position. He said before the petition was created he couldn’t walk down the street without people asking him if there was a petition he could sign. “I don’t know how much community feedback I’ve gotten. Everybody is just really impressed with the job [Bryan Hackbarth] does,” Thompson said. “To get rid of him would be absolutely foolish.”
Bjorn Johnson said it would be easy to just graduate and wash his hands of the matter, but he strongly believed letting go of the counseling position was the wrong decision. “We need a guidance counselor at CCHS,” he said. Classmates have told him they couldn’t have graduated without Bryan Hackbarth’s help. Johnson said that he had never seen students band together in such a way and that he believed the school could actually use two fulltime counselors.
CCHS would have a lot more dropouts without Bryan Hackbarth, Ali Iverson said.
Colton Deschampe’s mother, Sherri, who attended CCHS, said Bryan Hackbarth was the best counselor the school has ever had.
Colton Thompson’s grandmother, Arvis Thompson, read from the school stationery on which board meeting agendas are printed. It states in part, “We provide a safe environment in which mental and physical health is a priority.” “It sounds like Brian is the key to your mental health,” she said.
School board member Jeanne Anderson said the input they received was a valuable part of the process. The faculty was very supportive of keeping a full-time school counselor, she said.
School board member Deb White talked about priorities that include having small K-2 classrooms and going back to two principals, partly to attend to discipline issues that have been difficult for one principal to adequately handle.
Adequate staffing levels are important during the elementary years, Bjorn Johnson said, but guidance is needed during the high school years as well.
“The benefits of having a guidance counselor aren’t something you’re going to see on paper,” said student school board member Levi Axtell. When a student is involved in a conflict at school, he said, you can punish him or her or you can discuss the situation and help prevent problems in the future. “I think Mr. Hackbarth is the right man for the job,” Axtell said.
The board made a decision regarding the counselor position later in the meeting when they adopted a preliminary 2013-14 budget.
Superintendent Schwarz recommended a budget that would keep an unreserved fund balance of at least 20 days on hand as directed by the current school board. The school’s auditing firm has recommended that the school not dip below 20 days, which is still short of the 45-day balance a previous board put into policy several years ago. The unreserved fund balance projected for the end of this fiscal year on June 30 is $1,058,309, or about 35 days.
The board talked about how much of an unreserved fund balance to keep on hand at the expense of things that would enhance education, such as small K-2 class sizes, splitting 6th grade math and English into two sections each, and not combining Spanish III and IV into one section. School board member Ed Bolstad said he favored keeping items that would benefit students the most over arbitrarily keeping a certain number of unreserved fund balance days on hand. He said he is not losing sleep worrying about how much money the school has in the bank.
The budget Schwarz presented would cause the school to be deficit spending by about $250,000 in 2013- 14. She told the board that they could manage that for three years and then would slip into statutory operating debt given current funding projections.
“We need to plan for the future,” Jeanne Anderson said.
The board voted on a budget that would bring the unreserved fund balance down to 23 days. The budget includes small K-2 class sizes, two sections each of 6th grade math and English, and a combined Spanish III/ IV class, although Jeanne Anderson requested that they consider adding back in a section of Spanish. The budget also includes a fulltime school counselor.
Staffing changes
The 2013-14 school year will bring a number of personnel changes. Because of budget constraints and a fall enrollment projection of 432 students, the probationary positions of middle school science teacher Sarah Malkovich and early childhood special education teacher Deonne Brady-Morgan were terminated. The board approved advertising for a middle/high school principal. Finance Manager Cindy Carpenter Straub resigned after opening the Harbor House Grille with her husband, and Joan Ege announced her retirement.
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