Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
The agreement between the Palouse and Oakesdale school districts to share superintendent Jake Dingman next school year hit a rough spot last Thursday at a meeting of the Garfield and Palouse school boards.
Members of the Garfield board noted any cost savings they expected to result from merging business operations will not happen.
Dingman in March was named joint superintendent at Oakesdale and Palouse for next year. The arrangement will fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Supt. Bev Fox at the end of the month.
Garfield is headed by Supt. Zane Wells.
The Garfield-Palouse cooperative now spends approximately $122,000 for business operation costs which include a business manager and two assistants. The outlook for savings through Dingman’s link with Oakesdale apparently faded when Oakesdale’s board decided to keep an arrangement under which the Educational Service District in Spokane keeps Oakesdale’s books.
Palouse board members last week said the Oakesdale decision came as a surprise. However, the topic of merging bookkeeping operations was never specified in the joint Dingman hiring.
“I for one would have insisted it would have been a package deal,” Rusty Jamison, a member of the Garfield board, said at the joint session at the Garfield school library. “I see the cost is higher than you expected.”
“If I had to do it over again I would’ve made it part of the deal,” responded Palouse board president Mike Dymkoski. “It never even occurred to me that it wouldn’t be.”
Oakesdale board member Shelly Lobdell told the Gazette they had a couple of reasons to keep their arrangement with ESD.
“It’s a budget concern,” she said. “It’s imperative to cut costs, but not cut quality. We didn’t see a need to change. We love the ESD. We weren’t having any problems. We didn’t see a need at this time.”
Had Oakesdale dropped their ESD arrangement, the $40,000 cost could have gone into a three-way cost sharing with Garfield and Palouse.
Jamison Thursday indicated he believed Garfield should have been a larger part of the Dingman hiring at Palouse.
Brenda Brown, Palouse board member, said she believed they did reach out to Garfield to be involved in the discussions.
“I feel we did reach out, but the message we received was that you weren’t ready to move forward and we had to move forward,” she said.
“I respect your opinions when these big hirings occur,” responded Jamison. “I also understand not all opinions can be said at an open meeting.”
He continued to point out that he thought the Garfield board should have been more directly consulted.
“I felt our board would be asked and our opinion would matter,” Jamison said. “I would have brought up (the shared business office matter) because I’m not as trusting as you.”
“We would’ve had to have all the right things for that meeting to satisfy the executive session requirements,” responded Dymkoski.
Jamison suggested that discussions were held in closed sessions with Oakesdale.
“We never had a closed session with Oakesdale,” Dymkoski responded.
Garfield’s board president John Orfe said he thought his board should have been involved only during “intermittent periods” in the hiring process.
“Here’s the bottom line,” said Dymkoski. “We still would’ve hired Jake. We rolled the dice with the (business) arrangement, but we didn’t get sold down the river by not getting this. But shame on me for not making it part of the deal, and I’m prepared to move on.”
Dingman said later that the arrangement will not affect him.
“I think it’s fine,” he said. “The Garfield-Palouse staff is outstanding, the ESD is outstanding, so it’s a win-win. It’s the staff they know that does a great job.”
He went on to say that the arrangement may change in the future.
“As we move ahead, we’ll continue to see what we can share. We’re small schools, we’re always looking to share any resource,” said Dingman, who will begin his new post July 1.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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