Cash Acting Superintendent

In a Wednesday night special called meeting of the McCreary County Board of Education, McCreary Academy Principal Mike Cash was named Acting Superintendent by a 4-1 vote last week.

The motion was forwarded by Board member Debbie Gibson, who stated she believed the District needed both a Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent. Board member Roxanne Shook was the only dissenting vote.

The vote came after a 22-minute executive session where the Board discussed the possibility of naming an Interim Superintendent.

Following the closed-door session the Board stated since Donnie Wright is still, technically, the Superintendent, and is on a leave of absence until the end of the year, an interim cannot be named, only an Acting Superintendent.

Cash will assume the duties as Acting Superintendent immediately, while Aaron Anderson, who had been the Acting Superintendent since Wright’s leave of absence, will re-assume his Assistant Superintendant duties.

Wright tenured his resignation in May, with an effective date of December 31, 2015. Since then he has been on leave of absence, as agreed to with a settlement between Wright and the Board.

Anderson, who has served as Assistant Superintendent in the District since January 2007, was named Acting Superintendent that same day.

In November of 2007, Cash was one of eight applicants for the position following the departure of Ray Ball.

The screening committee put together to examine the applicants opted to forward the “four local” applicants to the Board.

Cash, along with Anderson, Tim Moore and Donnie Wright were each interviewed by the Board in a special session before the job was offered to Wright.

The Board met again in special session Tuesday evening to lift the hiring freeze in effect since May.

When the freeze was enacted, the stipulation was to leave it in place until an interim superintendent was hired. Since there will be no interim, it was up to the Board to lift the freeze.

The next step for the Board of Education in regards to choosing a permanent replacement for Wright, will be to form a search committee as required by Kentucky Statute to review applicants for the post and forward their recommendations to the Board to select the next Superintendent.

There has been no indication of a time line to begin the search, but Kentucky statutes require a committee to be formed at least 90 days before the expected vacancy.

The search committee must be comprised of two teachers, one Board of Education member, one principal, one parent and one classified employee.

In other actions Wednesday, the Board heard from Joe Nance of Ross Sinclair, the Public Finance service provider for the District concerning the expected costs of the planned construction projects for the District this summer.

Nance informed the Board that between local bonding potential, School Facilities Construction Commission bonding potential and nearly $800,000 left over from the high school renovation and expansion project, the District was in sound financial shape to complete the projects and still have more than $2 million in funding available for future projects.

The four main projects planned for this summer include replacing the roof at Pine Knot Intermediate School (($1,045,549), renovation of the high school gym floor ($195,663), Construction of the softball field house and repairs to the baseball locker room ($705,000) and fixing settlement issues at the middle school as well as replacing the roof ($810,241).

Tuesday night’s special meeting also saw the creation of a Preschool Program Assistant position. The position will be paid for out of preschool funding and not affect the General Fund.