Special Meeting of School Board 3-30-2009

The Escambia Couny School Board held a special meeting at 5:30 on Monday, March 30,2009.
The meeting was held in the Board Room at the downtown Garden Street offices.

There were two items on the agenda, Item one was permission to advertise the re-drawing of school attendance boundaries for three west-side elementary schools, to essentially pave the way for the closure of Edgewater Elementary School. The superintendent and his staff provided statistical information to those in attendance to bolster their position to close Edgewater--the data provided was compelling, and this same data can be found by following the below link:

http://www.escambia.k12.fl.us/PDF/Westside_Consolidation_Analysis.pdf



This permission to advertise passed with a 5-0 vote.

3 speakers chose to address the board on the closure issue, all three expressed disappointment over the decision to close Edgewater.

The second item on the agenda was a buy-out plan to offer certain senior employees a 25% bonus if these same employees would agree to retire.
This plan was approved by a 5-0 vote.

(I support this plan wholeheartedly because I believe this option will save us money in the long run. My only issue was that I felt that the deal should have included a clause that mandated a 5 year agreement for the bonus "takers" to not seek re-employment with the district, rather than just a one year agreement [as the plan was written]. As written, a person could take the bonus, take twelve months off, then seek re-employment with the district, albeit at salary step 5. This would still be a savings to the district, so in the end I still supported the plan as presented.)

Meeting adjourned at 6:25