The Oswego Board of Education met for its reorganization and regular meetings Tuesday evening, voting to elect Dave White as board president and Sean Madden as vice president.

New members Sam Tripp, John Dunsmoor and White who was reelected, were sworn in at the start of the meeting.

There were three nominees for vice president, Madden, Fred Maxon and Tripp. There were two votes for the position, the first with Maxon and Madden tying with three votes each. After member Jim Tschudy arrived, a revote was held and Madden won with a 4-3 vote.

White said he happy with being elected president and appreciated everybody’s support. “We’re going to have to make some tough decisions this year, but I think working together we can reach a consensus and we can resolve some of these problems. Obviously, people want a little, shall we say, pocket book relief,” he said. “Which I seriously think we’ve got to give them.”  

The new board decided to continue to meet at the high school’s Ralph Faust Theater for the rest of the summer with meetings commencing at 5 p.m. During the school year, members want to hold board of education meetings at different schools throughout the district.

Tripp noted that this practice was done previously and thinks it is a good idea to start it up again. “I really would like to see more of the community, more of the parents involved,” he said, noting that people might be more willing to participate more in the education process if meetings were held at their local school.

The board also voted to table the resolution to name an interim superintendent until it could gather more information. Currently, head of personnel for the district, Bill Crist, will remain as acting interim superintendent.

New board member John Dunsmoor made good on his campaign promise to hold town hall type meetings between the community and board members. “It would make it easier to discuss things…if we had a back and forth relationship,” he said.

Maxon agreed with Dunsmoor and suggested to move the portion of the agenda titled recess from after executive session to after the floor is offered to the speakers to meet with the community. “It will give us five, 10, 15 minutes at the longest as an opportunity to interact with people who stepped up to the microphone who raises an issue to discuss it with or somebody else who maybe didn’t have the nerve to step to the microphone,” he said. “Just give us 15 minutes to gather some information about what ever the issue might have been.” The board will begin this practice at its July 15 meeting.

Dunsmoor also suggested that the board taken another look at the budget to see if there are so vacancies in the district that could either not be filled or filled by someone already employed to save taxpayers money. He suggested looking at the house system to see whether it was working or not.

Maxon suggested having a management study done of the high school administration. White said he would get together with Crist this week and head of curriculum and instruction Cathy Chamberlain to see who the district could hire as an outside source to conduct the study. Tschudy said that the administrators at the high school should be included in the process and asked for their input on what can be done to help them improve their jobs.

The next board meeting will be held July 15 at 5 p.m. at the Ralph Faust Theater at the high school.