The Newberry Community School Board (NCSB) took another step toward finding a leader for its new charter school on Thursday night, with members giving the go-ahead to post the job listing for a principal, effective Oct. 1.
The date aligns with the principal hiring timeline, which the board adopted at its Sept. 9 meeting.
Board members were provided with an advanced copy of the job description from the application, as well as the proposed job posting, at Thursday’s meeting.
Lacy Roberts, who serves as the consultant for NCS, said the current draft of the job listing “requires applicants to submit a cover letter, resume and Florida leadership certification.”
She noted that the job advertisement is scheduled to be posted on the city of Newberry’s website, LinkedIn, Google jobs and the Florida Charter Institute job board.
Board members were also provided with a list of supplemental questions that Roberts said she feels should be included in the job posting for the applicant to answer.
Roberts asked the board if there were any other questions they would like to add to the job listing.
Treasure Leslie Hayes-Morrison asked if the additional questions were going to be for the interviews. Roberts said they would only be on the job application.
After some further discussion, the board unanimously approved a recommendation from Roberts to proceed with the submitted materials for the Oct. 1 job posting deadline. Vice Chair Leslie McGehee was absent from the meeting.
Also, during the meeting, the board authorized Roberts to enter a contract with Liquid Creative for the one-time cost of $17,500 that includes website design, branding and messaging, as well as a 12-month comprehensive marketing and communication plan for NCS.
For the webpage, Roberts said it would be “two-phase.”
“The website would be two-phase so that we could get something up pretty quick,” she said. “Get our [meeting] minutes posted on it, but then build out, with all the required specifications, a proper school website.”
Roberts said she discussed the school’s budget with financial services and said, “We have the startup money in this line” for the building of the website.
Meeting updates:
After working through its agenda items, the board heard several updates from Roberts and its attorney, Shawn Arnold.
Roberts said the school has a potential consultant to help with transportation, adding he’s a former, longtime manager in the transportation department in Alachua County.
“He is retired, and he is considering consulting with us to assist us through the buying of buses or contracting, to hiring employees, to getting them trained, to all the ins and outs of transportation that we wouldn’t know, but he is an expert,” she said.
Roberts said they have also secured insurance for board members with the Florida Insurance Alliance (FIA).
“We’ve been working on quotes for that,” she said. “We did get that secured, and it covers errors and omissions and crime coverage.”
Roberts’ last update was a request for board members.
“As you know, my contract caps my hours at 50 per month,” she said. “Given the scope and the pace right now of our ongoing work…and the scheduled training, I anticipate exceeding those hours to avoid unnecessary delays. I’m requesting that the board authorize the Chair [Derek Danne] to approve additional hours as needed…This flexibility will allow me to maintain the momentum on our current projects and prevent a two-week delay that could occur if I had to wait for the next scheduled board meeting.”
The board unanimously voted to allow Danne to approve consultant hours that would exceed 50 per month.
Roberts said she would provide Danne and the board with “regular updates on hours worked, progress made, ensuring transparency and accountability.”
During his allotted time, Arnold touched on the State Board of Education’s vote to dismiss an appeal by the School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) over the Newberry charter conversion. The state board also granted the charter conversion application to convert Newberry Elementary School into a charter school – NCS.
Despite the state board’s approval, the saga between NCS and SBAC may not be over quite yet, as the school board has pondered a potential lawsuit to keep NES from converting to a charter school.
Danne asked Arnold what this process might look like for the NCS Board if the SBAC decided to go this route.
“This is an even greater dispute and greater ladder or hurdle for the district to get over, because they’re going to have to show that the approval had no confident, substantial evidence, and then there is no confident, substantial evidence in the final State Board of Education order,” he said.
Arnold said if the SBAC does decide to appeal again, the NCS Board will ensure it “doesn’t stop this charter [conversion] process from going [forward].”
Before the meeting concluded, Danne also addressed a few other items, including some feedback the board has heard about not live-streaming meetings.
“I know our community is used to that [with city meetings],” he said. “We would love to do that. What I would say is, right now, we’re meeting on a more frequent schedule. And it does have a cost associated with streaming, and that would be a cost that we can’t put toward our kids and toward opening a great school.”
Danne said there is a possibility in the future, when the board moves to a “cadence of less meetings” it would lean toward doing something like this.
Nick Anschultz is a Report for America corps member and writes about education for Mainstreet Daily News. This position is supported by local donations through the Community Catalyst for Local Journalism Fund at the Community Foundation of North Central Florida.