FREDERICKTOWN – Two of the three newly elected Fredericktown school board members assumed the highest leadership roles during the first meeting of the year Tuesday.
Paul Napier is board president and Don Falk is vice president for the 2022 term. Three new board members — Napier, Falk and Nathan Bellman — took office Tuesday. Bellman and Napier took office despite an informal opinion from the Ohio attorney general’s office advising them not to because of conflicts of interest with their employment at the Knox County Career Center.
As is customary for the first meeting of the year, the board approved several routine reorganizational items but also a handful of more timely items.
The board rescinded the date for assistant treasurer Dawn Campbell’s resignation from Dec. 21, 2021, to Jan. 7, 2022. The board previously approved Campbell’s resignation during a Dec. 7 meeting. Board member Todd McClay asked for an explanation, which interim superintendent Jim Peterson provided.
“She has come in on several occasions to help the treasurer’s office out,” Peterson said. “We were getting behind and she came in, and I just thought that was the right thing to do.”
Board member Candi Gallagher asked if the board needed a separate motion to pay Campbell out for the additional time. District treasurer Heather Darnold said the board did not have to approve the additional pay.
Tuesday was also Peterson’s first school board meeting as interim superintendent, although it was not Peterson’s first Fredericktown school board meeting. Peterson is a former Fredericktown superintendent, from 2009 to 2013.
Peterson’s main message Tuesday: “We all have to get back to working together.”
Some state changes are impacting Fredericktown Local Schools finances.
Ohio’s minimum wage changed from from $8.80 per hour to $9.30 per hour Jan. 1, and the board voted to accept the state minimum wage Tuesday. This change specifically impacts substitute cooks, substitute teacher aides, substitute secretaries and LatchKey staff.
The district’s expenses exceeded revenue for December, which has been the case for the past several months.
Darnold specifically mentioned changes to Educational Service Center payments. The ESC is now billing for services used on a monthly basis, whereas previously they gave an annual invoice split between 24 payments and taken out monthly from the district’s state aid.
“So far I will say that with them doing this I have found that expenditures for the ESC have been higher,” Darnold said.
Regarding principal reports, Fredericktown Local Schools is on track to graduate 100% of its senior class in 2022, high school principal Brent Garee said during the school board meeting Tuesday.
During public comment, speakers mainly voiced concern about how the school board handled the informal opinion advising newly elected board members not to take office, but speakers also voiced support for how the matter is now being resolved. Bellman and Napier’s legal counsel and Knox County Prosecutor Chip McConville have begun discussions to figure out a way for the board members to avoid conflicts of interest.
More than 70 people attended Tuesday’s the first school board meeting of the year.
“I do hope in our February meeting that the same crowd comes back and shares and participates and gets to know the inner runnings of the school district,” Peterson said. “It’s not as easy as some of us may believe.”
