Two Cassia County School District administrators, Kim Bedke and Steve Copmann, submitted their resignations to trustees during a school board meeting, citing administrative changes, staff reductions, and sluggish communications. The resignations occurred during a public comment period of the annual board budget hearing, just before trustees approved a budget of $58.7 million, about $200,000 bigger than the previous year.
Background
Drops in enrollment and therefore state funding led trustees to make job cuts. Constituents filled the boardroom on Monday night and expressed frustration with trustees’ efforts to communicate those cuts. Burley resident Jerri Tegan said, “I don’t like finding out on Facebook what the budget problem is.”
Cassia County voters approved a $7 million, two-year supplemental levy in May. The levy helps keep district funding flat while it loses millions in state funding due to enrollment declines — elementary classes shrank an average of almost 10% since the prior year, according to a presentation by the district’s Director of Fiscal Affairs, Chris James.
Administrative Cuts
To comply with a $2 million drop in state funding, trustees sliced admin duties and cut 17 teachers and 10 classified positions, largely by attrition. One of the administrative cuts involved transforming a vice principal role at Burley Junior High into a dual role: vice principal and counselor. Current Burley Junior High Counselor Elizabeth Castaneda told trustees she disagrees with the change on an ethical basis.
Bedke, the district’s Director of Federal Programs, said she received a mysterious letter from the board informing her she would no longer be the district’s director of federal programs and would be moved into a new role. “I have not been given a clear understanding of my future responsibility,” Bedke told trustees. The new job, she said, came with a full salary, even though the role of “RTI Coordinator” was once a subset of her administrative job.
Burley High Principal Copmann followed Bedke, stating, “We had meetings to discuss teacher cuts — no discussions to talk about admin changes, they were imposed.” Copmann submitted his resignation, effective at the end of June.
Original reporting: Idaho Education News — read the source article.
