RASD school board elects new board member in March meeting

In a 5-3 vote, Natalie Aiello was elected to fill a vacancy on the school board left by Rick Vigilone, who was hired as the school’s athletic director at last month’s meeting.

Aiello will begin to attend meetings as a school board member in April.

Before the vote took place, board member Aimee Kemick questioned why the board vacancy was not publicly advertised, following past practices.

Board President Amy Goode said that the vacancy was put out at a previous meeting and that the board solicited a letter of interest.

Knox Law Firm, who was in attendance virtually for the meeting and based out of Erie, said that the school code does not require to publicly advertise board vacancies and that it is up to the board on how to handle the specific matter.

After Aiello was elected, Kemick added that there were four well qualified candidates to fill the vacancy.

Erica Heindl, who is the director of special education for the district, gave a presentation on the Bureau of Special Education Cyclical Monitoring Report.

Heindl serves students in kindergarten through grade twelve and has a variety of additional tasks, but focuses on special education.

Recently, there was an audit conducted for special education at RASD, otherwise known as the Bureau of Special Education Cyclical Monitoring Report.

Heindl described the special education audit as a “large daunting task” that takes about a year to complete.

The data that is submitted is from the past three years, and Heindl has different times of the school year that she has to submit data.

This data is collected and then reported back out in this monitoring report.

The bureau compliance officer notifies Superintendent Heather McMahon-Vargas of when the audit will take place, which in this case was in January.

As part of the audit, teacher, student, and parent surveys are issued. Only students aged 14 and older are asked to complete the survey.

At an in-service in October, Heindl and the school psychologist did a training with the staff on how to conduct the student surveys.

Heindl said that the staff did “phenomenal” facilitating the surveys.

Out of 156 parents, 41 responded back to the surveys. While it may not seem like strong participation, the bureau compliance officer said that bigger school districts may not get 20 responses back when it comes to parent surveys.

The compliance officer was pleased with the staff as a whole in both the elementary school and the high school.

He also praised the different programs that the special education department offers.

Some of the areas for growth that came out of this audit were their graduation and dropout rates, but a low number of special education students were enrolled when the data was prepared for this report.

The size of the graduating students impacted the data, as there was one dropout out of five graduating students.

Overall, Henidl’s report from this audit was a positive one as these audits are conducted every six years.

The students of the month for February in the FSG Elementary School were kindergartners Aria Smith and Aiden Caggiano.

The extraordinary Elker for the month for middle school were Mason Hollobaugh and Kaden Hoffman for the high school.

As part of her board report, Middle-High School Principal Noel Petrosky shared with the board that Joe Kemick was awarded the Mark Twain award, as he was nominated by fellow faculty member Jennifer Olay.

“His enthusiasm and passion for teaching is infectious and he brings out the best in his students,” Olay said. “No one can bring energy to mathematics like Joe does.”

Principal of the FSG Elementary School Dr. Michael Guidice shared with the board that he is serving on the RASD Title I Committee, the RASD Curriculum Committee, and the RASD Policy Committee.

He also said that teacher walkthroughs are being completed and that kid talks and data meetings are scheduled to take place in late March.

Business Manager Donna Sidelinger shared that a second adhoc budget meeting was held on Tuesday, March 5. The next budget meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 2 immediately following a work session meeting.

She also shared that upon approval of the transportation consulting agreement, they will begin gathering information from a IU 28 representative.

Among the policy and personnel items that were approved was the hiring of David Fordoski to serve as the director of secondary student affairs at a salary of $65,000 pro-rated for the 2023-24 school year.

This is effective upon release of his current employer and the completion of all hiring paperwork.

Fordoski is required to obtain his principal’s certification within one year from the date of the hire.

The next RASD school board meeting will be held on Tuesday, April 9 at 6:30 p.m. in the FSG Elementary School cafeteria.