GENTRY — Gentry School Board approved contracting the services of Laura Brown, a licensed emergency care provider and athletic trainer, to provide medical expertise on sports injuries at games and to provide therapy treatments to injured athletes.
The option which had been turned down by the board at its special July 12 meeting was brought back to the board for more explanation on Monday.
With standby ambulance and paramedic services no longer to be provided at Gentry home games, the school board was faced with the option of hiring an emergency medical technician to be on standby at the games for $25 per hour, a paramedic for $50 per hour or a certified trainer.
According to coach Little, also the school’s athletic director, a very conservative cost estimate just to cover home games would be a minimum of $1,300 for the football season. He said the cost would likely be considerably higher.
Brown offered her services as a trainer to the school district with three options: Game coverage for $2,000; Game coverage plus sports therapy for Gentry athletes on three days a week for $5,000; or game coverage and sports therapy five days a week for $8,000.
Little said a trainer might enable injured athletes to recover more quickly and could assess injuries at games. Brown would also travel to away games.
School board members approved contracted services for games and therapy services three days a week by a 6-1 vote. Ted Dorn voted against the measure. Jim Barnes, Coye Cripps, Dani Cypert, Gary Dunlap, David Williamson and Brenda Willett voted in favor of the contract services.
The board accepted the resignations of Dan Childress, middle school social studies teacher and high school girls’ soccer coach; Sarah Bartmier, middle school art teacher; and Jennifer Waeltz, special education aide.
Hired at the meeting were Fabrizo Campagnola, to replace Childress; Sharon Coleman to replace Bartmier as art teacher; Joy White, to teach middle school science; and Tahmara Coones as speech-language pathologist for the multi-district consortium and assigned to Decatur.
Campagnola, it was noted by Barrett, has a master’s degree in education, is English-as-a-second-language certified, played and coached soccer in Italy and was an assistant soccer coach in Rogers.
Also hired were two cafeteria cooks and a full slate of custodial workers to replace the service the district contracted last year in order to save money as a part of a plan to be released from fiscal distress.
Conner Willett was hired as a computer technician, making it necessary under the law for board member Brenda Willett, Connor’s mother, to resign her post on the school board. Brenda Willett was not present in the board room when the board made its hiring decisions on Monday.
The board appointed board member Dani Cypert to assume Brenda Willett’s board secretary duties. The board will also appoint a replacement for Willett after it considers applicants for the zone-three position.
No action was taken by the board on an offer by Leon Bland and Jason England to sell to the school district a full block of land lying between the Gentry Intermediate School and the Gentry City Park. Board chairman Jim Barnes thanked Bland and England for the offer and said the board would consider it.
School superintendent Randy Barrett reported that the district had finished the 2010 school year on solid financial ground, saying it had carried over close to $1.7 million. He stressed the importance of continuing on the same conservative financial course in upcoming years to avoid another fiscal distress situation.