The Examiner U-46 News FeedU-46 Board approves 353 employee dismissals By Seth Hancock
On Monday, March 7, the Board of Education in School District U-46 unanimously approved the authorization of honorable dismissals of 353 district employees at the end of this school year and also unanimously approved the 2016-17 board meeting schedule.
Melanie Meidel, who heads the district’s Human Resources Department, said that per state law dismissals must be approved “up until 45 days before the end of the school year,” and the “dismissal consideration is customary at this time of the year in order to follow state requirements.”
There were four resolutions approved representing four categories of employees which included 50 teachers on the first resolution.
Board member Jeanette Ward asked “in the past when we had issued these resolutions we have, the past five years, correct me if I’m wrong, hired them all back,” which Meidel said was correct.
U-46 CEO Tony Sanders later said “some of the other categories that was not always the case,” those other categories all being educational support personnel. There are 32 union dismissals, 71 non-union and 200 grant funded project personnel.
The board meeting schedule for 2016-17 will follow the same general pattern of meetings held on the first and third Mondays of each month.
“We tried to stick with the first and third Mondays as much as possible,” said Donna Smith, the board’s president. “Due to holidays and spring break I think caused us to move one, but other than that we tried to stick with the first and third Monday with the optional in the middle.”
The previous board meeting schedule for the 2014-15 school year held just one meeting in June, but that was changed to two for the current schedule and there are two for the upcoming schedule.
“We tried this last June limiting it to one meeting but found that did not work,” Sanders said.
Ward, who was elected last spring, recalled the one June meeting lasting over four hours, to which Smith quipped that Ward “got here just in time for the trial.”
Also unanimously approved was $6.6 million in itemized bills as well as over $400,000 in expenditures and the administration’s plan to increase breakfast and lunch prices for full-paying students.
The price increases for meals will see breakfasts cost rise from $1.25 to $1.35, lunches from $2.65 to $2.80 and milk only from 40 cents to 50 cents. Reduced priced meals will remain the same at 30 and 40 cents respectively for breakfast and lunch, and the administration’s proposal stated the need for the change was that the district has to charge the paying customers “more equal with funds brought in from free and reduced-price meal” if the district takes part in the National School Lunch Program.
Coming out of the education fund is $149,868 with the College Board to pay for a student’s first Advanced Placement exam as well as $133,020 for a three-year contract with Global Datebooks to provide staff and student planners at the secondary level.
Paid for by the nation’s taxpayers through a Perkins grant is $52,995 with Iverson and Company to purchase two gear head engine lathes and $72,150 with JBH Technologies to purchase a Speedy 300 Flexx Laser Cutter/Engraver, both for Streamwood High School’s precision manufacturing program.
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