Spring-Ford School District plans to add new administrator at cost of $ 230,000 | Local News

ROYERSFORD – The new Spring-Ford area school district superintendent has planned a new structure for his administration, which involves hiring another administrator and has a total cost of $ 230,000.

Robert Rizzo went from assistant superintendent to acting superintendent in February, and then, in April, abruptly promoted to the highest full-time position.

“With a new superintendent, we felt maybe now was the time to approach the board with a restructuring,” Rizzo told the board on Monday.

In the current structure, the Assistant Superintendent oversees the Director of Curriculum and Instruction (who oversees two Curriculum Supervisors); four special education supervisors; school counselors, social workers, nurses and psychologists.

“It’s pretty important to be responsible for all of this,” said Rizzo.

He proposed to create two assistant superintendent positions; one to be responsible for special education and student services, and a second for “teaching, learning and innovation”.

If the school board agrees, the district will hire two administrators. One to replace Rizzo and another to fill the second assistant superintendent position.

The total net cost to the district, Rizzo said, would be around $ 230,000.

Rizzo has already offered to hire Kelly M. Murray, for the position of Assistant Superintendent of Teaching, Learning and Innovation, effective September 28, at a salary of $ 165,000 and has indicated that ‘he had another candidate for the second post.

Board member Clinton Jackson said he appreciated Rizzo’s presentation, but said he “struggled” to “add nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the budget.”

Board member David Shafer suggested the district might end up saving enough money through additional special education oversight in the form of sending fewer students to expensive schools and less. regulations with parents of special education students to offset the additional cost.

Indeed, on the same agenda which included the reorganization proposed by Rizzo, one could find no less than 14 items related to special education services which totaled more than 1.3 million dollars.

In addition, the agenda contained two legal settlements for special education lawsuits totaling $ 141,278; and the hiring of five new counselors, social workers and behavioral analysts at a cost of $ 477,523, paid for through the federal COVID assistance program, to address the additional mental health costs of the pandemic and its control measures.

The volume of special needs issues is “too large for a single professional with the ever increasing volume of special education needs / requirements as well as general education needs and requirements”, Rizzo told the board.

He also reminded them that “Spring-Ford has discussed the need for several years to better serve our special education population.

The next Spring-Ford School Board meeting will be on September 27 at 7:30 p.m.