Creston Community School District will offer an early retirement program to the 37 district employees who are eligible this year, after the CCSD Board of Directors unanimously approved the program during Monday’s regular meeting.
The early retirement program was initially discussed during July’s board meeting. At that time, CCSD Superintendent Steve McDermott said he believed it would benefit the district to activate the program for this school year.
The district’s management fund holds enough money to allocate up to $200,000 toward early retirement. McDermott also reported there is potential to adjust that $200,000 cap depending on who applies for the program.
To be eligible for early retirement benefits, an employee must meet all of the following criteria: has reached age 55 on or before July 31, 2019; has worked a minimum of the previous 15 years continuously with the district; notifies the board of their interest no later than Oct. 31 and works through the end of the 2018-19 school year.
Early retirement benefits pay out 20 percent of the employee’s annual base salary plus compensation for half of the employee’s accumulated sick leave, with the maximum benefit amount for any employee with 15-29 years of service being $15,000 and the maximum benefit amount for employees with 30 or more years of service being $20,000.
If all 37 eligible employees applied for early retirement, it would cost the district $555,000 to pay out.
“We couldn’t swing that,” McDermott said during the July meeting. “Keep in mind, though, all 37 won’t apply for early retirement.”
McDermott said the district sets a dollar amount as a cap and then, if more staff members apply than anticipated, recipients are determined by seniority.
“We go straight seniority,” McDermott said in July. “Some places of employment go with a first-come, first-serve approach and we don’t want tents pitched out front here with people waiting for us to open up on the deadline.”
McDermott has proposed moving the timeline for applying for early retirement up significantly. In the past, early retirement applications haven’t been due until January, early February or even March.
McDermott said he would like to have applications in by Oct. 31, giving the district more time for budget planning, while also giving administration a head start in recruiting new teachers for the open positions.
STOP School Violence
CCSD Business Manager Billie Jo Greene reported during Monday’s meeting the district worked together with the city of Creston to apply for the STOP School Violence Grant.
The grant was written for $735,000, with the grant itself for $500,000. That would leave the district responsible for $235,000, which McDermott said is still in the district’s safety and security budget line.
Included in the grant is a shooter alert system for all locations at $445,000, panic buttons that will allow secretaries and administrators to lock down buildings at $31,000, adding a fob system to the bus barn and Burton R. Jones locations, lighting upgrades at $103,000, metal detectors in all locations for $35,000, paging systems in all locations for $59,000 and about $26,000 for two-way radios in all locations for janitors.
“The grant was very hard to write,” Greene said. “It was actually very hard to access, too. The city, thankfully, worked with us. It’s a grant they have to write for our use. I’m not sure if all districts and cities have that great of working relationship.”
Greene said she worked with Joel Lamb of Southern Iowa Council of Governments, as well as Mike Taylor at the city level.
“We’re not just jumping on a grant because there’s money there,” McDermott said. “We’ve been working on this. We’ve also invested a lot of our current funding to get to the point where we are now with the cameras and the doors and the phones. Another item that came up was a student leadership group that met last spring and gave us their priorities, well, safety and security was their No. 1 concern – 67 percent, I believe, of students themselves identified that as a need. So, that was written into the grant.”
McDermott said he believes the district’s chances of receiving the grant are good because of the work already done by the district to upgrade security, including having an audit done by Homeland Security.