LOWELL — As many school districts look to staffing cuts, officials in the Tri-Creek Schools have moved to add five full-time educators.
Tri-Creek School Board members last week unanimously approved filling five full-time teaching positions and creating a new district technology integrationist
position after listening to pitches for those posts from principals and Superintendent Alice Neal earlier this month.
Lowell High School will add full-time social studies, mathematics and Spanish teachers for the 2011-2012 school year. A full-time physical education and Project Lead the Way instructor will be coming to the middle school.
Officials also moved to increase the hours of several part-time staff members. The elementary behavioral interventionist will move from four days a week to five while the three elementary school nurses will increase from four to five hours per day. The school district’s residency/attendance officer will move from 20 to 30 hours per week.
Business Manager Thomas Dykiel said years of watching where every dollar goes has helped the school district recover from previous budget cuts and fill positions that are needed by principals who have been working around previous staffing cuts.
“We pinched pennies over the years and built up a nice cash balance, that’s how we’re able to do it,” Dykiel said.
A large number of retiring teachers also helped to ease the school district’s budget crunch.
The elementary school physical education position went unfilled last year. Filling the position will enable the school to offer physical education to seventh- and eighth-grade students every day instead of one semester a year.
It will also reduce the amount of time students spend in study hall and allow the school to offer more art to sixth- and seventh-graders.
The social studies position at the high school also went unfilled this year. The mathematics and Spanish teachers will be new postings.
Dykiel said while there are many unknowns when it comes to school budgets, the school district should be able to maintain these positions for the next several years.
“This is all for student achievement. We’re always trying to do what’s best for the kids,” he said.