The school district’s superintendent has resigned and new school bus fees approved last month have been slashed in half.
Greg Luterbach, superintendent of School District 20, gave his notice approximately two weeks ago and will be leaving his position on Aug. 1. The board has already approved Bill Ford, the current assistant superintendent, as Luterbach’s replacement.
“We’re really pleased to make that announcement and we’re really sad to lose Greg,” said Teri Ferworn, chair of the board.
As of yet, no replacement has been found for the assistant superintendent position.
“We are going to be meeting next week to discuss what we’ll be doing around that,” said Ferworn. “Because this is an ideal time that if we want[ed] to make any administrative changes that we would be able to do that.”
The board has also agreed to cut busing fees in half after the district was allowed to keep “$178,000 of funding originally required to go back to government.” The decision was made at a closed board meeting on Tuesday, June 7 and parents were informed on Friday.
“We approved $125,000 of that going directly to reduce the busing fees by 50 per cent, and the remaining [$53,000] is going to repair projects on buildings in the district,” explained Ferworn.
Repair projects include repairs to the Stanley Humphries Secondary School roofs.
“They’re minor projects, because there wasn’t enough money for major projects,” said Ferworn.
Anyone who already registered and paid will have 50 per cent of what they paid refunded electronically. The district says those refunds will be processed sometime this week.
Wednesday, June 15 at 11 p.m. is still the deadline for early bird pricing. Anyone wishing to pay via the 10-month payment plan should still register between Thursday, June 16 and Sunday, July 31.