The resignation of 205 School Board Member Rick Welty after their Jan. 11 meeting seemed to catch fellow board members and Superintendent Ralph Grimm off guard.
Grimm tells WGIL that a special meeting will be held tomorrow night to chart a path forward in the replacement process.
“The board will review the policy to discuss the process they want to follow,” Grimm says. “That conversation has not taken place yet.”
The law dictates that Welty had few enough days left in his term that it does not require a special election.
The board has 45 days from when Welty resigned to appoint a new member. At that time the responsibility would fall on the lap of Regional Superintendent of Schools Jodi Scott.
Grimm is directing the board to handle it themselves and believes they will.
They have the option of accepting resumes and conducting interviews but also can choose to go into closed session to talk about how they people they would like to approach.
“It could very easily be that we don’t go into closed session to discuss that tomorrow night but the board may choose to do that as well,” Grimm says.
Welty also served as Board Secretary and the board will also decide tomorrow on who his successor will be.
Grimm floated Member Amy Pickrel as a possibility.
As far as the considerable list of cuts to district funding the board has been considering two items will be voted on to be stricken from the cut list.
The board will vote on no longer considering removing longevity bonuses for secretaries and administrative assistants not in the retirement pipeline and eliminating in-school suspension supervisors from the high school and two middle schools.
