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After Title I designation, Monroe board debates assistant principal and support for Stephanie Elementary
Summary
Board members spent extended time discussing support for Stephanie Elementary after it became the district’s Title I school: members cited 491 enrollment, about 93 special‑education students, and the limits of Title I funding (~$112,000) as they argued over adding an assistant principal now or awaiting ad hoc redistricting decisions.
Board members devoted a large portion of the meeting to staffing and supports at Stephanie Elementary after the superintendent confirmed Stephanie will receive Title I services this year.
The superintendent explained Title I basics and said the district’s Title I allocation this year is about $112,000; because the district uses a targeted‑assistance model (not a schoolwide model), those funds are earmarked to support specific students falling behind rather than broadly funding all school needs.
Several board members urged creation of an assistant principal post at Stephanie, saying the school’s enrollment (about 491 students), its roughly 93 students receiving special education services, and a high share of students eligible for free and reduced‑price lunch and English‑language learners create a workload that a single principal cannot sustainably handle. Board members described duties that pull a principal away from instructional leadership — IEP/PPT meetings, emergency responses, evaluations and frequent parent contacts — and noted the district already routes central‑office administrators and specialists to help; those measures, they argued, are insufficient to meet day‑to‑day needs.
Other members cautioned that an ad hoc facilities/redistricting committee remains active and that projected enrollment and building assignments could change; they asked for clearer, quantifiable measures of administrative time demand before committing to a new permanent position. Several board members said they were sympathetic to the workload argument but wanted to avoid creating a position that might be redundant if enrollment shifts in the next year.
District staff described how evaluation duties are currently distributed (for example, some administrators evaluate staff across multiple buildings) and said the Title I grant can pay for interventionists and partial salaries but is not large enough to cover a full administrative hire. Board members discussed the tradeoffs of adding staff now versus temporarily reallocating resources.
Next steps: the board did not take a formal vote to create an assistant principal post. The ad hoc committee’s ongoing work and updated enrollment projections will inform future decisions; the discussion was recorded as part of the budget deliberations that culminated in the board asking for a $250,000 reduction in the proposed budget to be implemented by the superintendent.
