The Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District’s human resources department will go paperless with its routine forms following a unanimous vote from the school board Monday night.
The vote was taken during a special school board meeting after the measure was tabled during the regular school board meeting held Dec. 12 due to some uncertainties surrounding a five percent annual increase in the contract. The initial cost of the three-year agreement with PeopleAdmin will be $19,850, including training. The next two years will cost $11,300 annually.
Superintendent Eddie Peasant said the increase had been removed since the initial meeting.
“I’ve spoken with them and addressed that,” Peasant said. “Of course, they did say that it was their fault, and they didn’t mean for that.”
Peasant also said Board Attorney John Hill had found language in the contract holding the district accountable to laws in Texas, where PeopleAdmin is headquartered.
“We had that adjusted to where John (Hill) is satisfied that it will serve us a lot better than the original,” Peasant said. “We’ve had all of that done with this. I’m glad it was brought to our attention.”
The board also unanimously voted to set two dates, an annual evaluation of Peasant’s performance as superintendent on Jan. 16 and a meeting with McPherson and Jacobsen consultant James Hutto
on Feb. 13. The meeting with Hutto will center on strategic planning in the district.
Following the meeting the board discussed its tentative 2018 calendar in a work session. Some items suggested for the board to focus on in the coming year included readings of various board policies at meetings over the course of the entire year, looking deeply into the achievement levels of district students broken down across various lines, looking closely at online programs the district uses and hearing reports from various district departments.
“I want to look at achievement data by subgroup,” said board member Debra Prince. “I want to see what the girls are doing, what the boys are doing, what the free and reduced lunch students are doing, what the paid lunch students are doing, what the black students are doing, what the white students are doing, just measure gains, growth, gaps over time.”
Prince said she thought the district needed a “road map” of where each group of students stood in order to help the district see where it needed to help.
Peasant said the district had been planning a close investigation of the many online programs it uses.
Following the rules for a work session, no action was taken.