Former Superintendent Address Dieterich School Board

A retired superintendent of the district addressed the Dieterich Board of Education at their meeting Monday night.

Bill McClain, who now heads Dieterich Community Development Corporation, spoke to the Board regarding an early childhood and daycare center and extra-curricular transportation. 

McClain highlighted what he believes is a need for daycare and early childhood education in the Dieterich community.  The Board has researched the possibility of building a structure to house the project.  The Board has also performed a feasibility study regarding the project, and the study showed the Center would be costly financially to the district.

McClain pointed out that the benefit to the District would be from decreased long-term Special Education costs.

McClain also asked the Board to re-visit an earlier decision to eliminate extra-curricular transportation.  After much discussion, the Board chose to table the topic and further address the issue at a special Board meeting set for 5:30pm on August 20 in the elementary school library.

Dieterich Superintendent Cary Jackson presented a tentative fiscal year budget that shows an overall deficit of $355,000.  The deficits total more than $246,000 in the Education Fund, $119,000 in the Operations and Maintenance Fund, and $16,000 in the Transportation Fund.  The Board placed the proposal on public file and will hold a hearing on the measure at their September meeting.

Jackson was joined by high school principal Kevin Haarman and elementary principal Kathy Pattenaude in presenting administrative goals for the coming year, chief among them the alignment to Common Core standards as an effort to measure academic success.