Cape Girardeau school board holds special session

In a special session, the Cape Girardeau school board reduced the candidates for its open position from eight to five Monday evening.

Candidates Twila Brown, Brynda Dickson, Martha Hamilton, Brenda Newbern and Carrie Beth Smith remain and will now go through an interview process before one is chosen for the position. Board members voted by ranking their choices one through eight, with eight being the first choice. Board secretary Laverne Smith tallied the scores.

"I feel that all the candidates are very qualified for the position," said candidate Carrie Beth Smith. "I feel like I have a lot to offer the school system and I'm glad I'm a finalist for the position. I don't have an agenda; I want to work with what's there."

The five finalists for the vacant position will now be interviewed by the board at 4:30 p.m. Monday before the normal board meeting at 6 p.m.

The board also discussed teacher salaries at great length. "This is an important issue because our hiring salary right now is not competitive with another area school," board president Steve Trautwein said. "That's why we want to get it up as close to $30,000 as we can."

Brenda McCowan, director of finance for the district, presented many different starting salary plans to the board, with the most well-received being a raise to $26,500 in generated base salary, or $29,150 after the index salary schedule.

"The administration and the board have been trying to raise salaries for some time," said school superintendent Dr. David Scala. "Regardless of what we do here, there are going to be some people that are going to be unhappy."

The raise to $29,150 would cost the school $2.15 million more than it spent last year, for a total near $18.15 million. However, that cost is expected to be offset by $2.13 million in new money coming in for next year.

"I think we should reward these teachers with more education," said board member Laura Sparkman. "We need to keep our educators from leaving."

Teacher salary raises will be voted on at the Monday meeting.

Extra duty pay was also addressed. McCowan said not much progress could be made in this area until the salary issue was cleared up, as both committees were made up of the same members.

"I've got to say it somewhat frustrates me that something hasn't been done in this area," said Trautwein. "I remember having this same conversation maybe a year ago. However, I do understand we had to take care of the salary issue first."

A closed session was also held to discuss personnel.