G-R board approves over $150,000 in budget cuts

Just two years after passing the massive budget reductions that resulted in the permanent closing of the district’s Gladbrook campus, the Gladbrook-Reinbeck board of education approved another round of cuts estimated to save $150,878 during its regular meeting on Thursday, March 23.
 
The cuts, which primarily target the special education department, were approved by a 6-1 vote, with Suzie Petersen the lone dissenter, and they will go into effect in the fall if they are certified after next month’s public hearing on the budget. According to Superintendent David Hill, a total of four positions will be eliminated: two elementary special education associates, one junior high/high school special education associate and one elementary library associate. The junior high special education teacher position will be reduced from 1.0 full-time equivalent (FTE) to 0.8, and the high school special education teacher positions will be reduced from 2.0 FTE to 1.67. An elementary special education teacher will also spend part of their time teaching transitional kindergarten.
 
“We really did a careful analysis of the anticipated caseload of our special education students, and we just have a lower number (of them) right now,” Hill said in a subsequent interview. “So this is still going to result in adequate staffing to meet the needs of our special education students.”
 
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