Board of Education Taxes

An expected vote to privatize the school district’s 123 paraprofessionals was put off Feb. 20 by the Board of Education. District officials said they wanted more time to gather information to answer questions posed by the public at the Feb. 17 special meeting, when more than two hours of comment was heard by the board on the proposal. The board …

School district teachers’ aides showed up in force at the Feb. 17 Board of Education meeting to tell the board just what they thought of yet another proposal to outsource their jobs. In a nutshell: Not much. Over the course of more than two hours, the paraprofessionals and their supporters took the podium during the meeting’s public portion to warn …

Board of Education president Julia Presley on at least eight occasions consulted with the board attorney on the former schools Superintendent’s separation agreement that is predicated on the withdrawal of ethics complaints against her, according to the attorney’s invoices. The conversations are delineated in invoices submitted for November and December, 2013, by board attorney Robert M. Tosti. Presley as recently …

Former schools Superintendent Edward Seto will be paid nearly $55,000 and has agreed to waive ethics complaints against the Board of Education leadership in a separation agreement approved Jan. 31 by the school board. The board met in a special session to approve the agreement, accept Seto’s resignation and appoint Eveny Pagan as the interim Superintendent. Neither vote was unanimous; …

On the night the Board of Education was told it could save at least $675,000 a year by privatizing its paraprofessionals, one board member said the district should also outsource substitute teachers. The idea came from the Board of Education’s finance committee chairman, Delvin Burton, after he told his colleagues that they’re looking at a more than $2 million shortfall …

The Board of Education has called a special meeting for 7 p.m. Jan. 31 for an executive session to “discuss the Superintendent’s separation agreement and the appointment of an acting superintendent,” according to the meeting’s notice. The notice says that public action will be taken after the executive session. In a split decision, the board voted last year to not …

The first real discussion among Board of Education members about selecting a new schools Superintendent will be held at the February work session. That’s not to say the board hasn’t already talked about it, albeit haltingly. At the Jan. 23 work session, several board members peppered board president Julia Presley with questions about the selection process, and also questioned why …

The Jan. 6 schools closing over the bus contract crisis used the last of the district’s four “snow days,” schools Superintendent Edward Seto said in a message to parents. If schools need to be closed for the remainder of the school year, the district will have to take away scheduled vacation days, he said in the message, posted Jan. 10 …

Stung by criticism that they needlessly waited until the last minute to decide to close schools on Jan. 6 due to concerns over the district’s main bus contractor, district administrators have released more details about what happened during the time leading up to the decision and its aftermath. Schools Superintendent Edward Seto late in the evening of Jan. 5 decided …

Julia Presley was re-elected president of the Board of Education and Eva Nagy was elected vice president during the board’s rescheduled reorganization meeting. Presley and newly elected board members Christine Danielsen and Nancy LaCorte were sworn into their terms during the meeting. The meeting was originally scheduled for Jan. 2, but had to be postponed due to the snow storm. …