Alan Sorensen Havre Daily News asorensen@havredailynews.com
Spontaneous applause erupted from the 20 or so people attending the school board meeting Tuesday night when the Havre trustees unanimously agreed to offer interim superintendent Dennis Parman the full-time job for the next three years. The board was unanimous again moments later when it OK’d the contract for the 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years recommended by its superintendent’s contract committee. The votes were the first items of business following a 45-minute executive session in which the board and Parman went over his evaluation report. Committee chair Todd Hanson said the three-year contract, retroactive to July 1, is open to renegotiation each of the next two years. Parman was appointed interim s u p e r int end ent May 31 a f t e r Superintendent Kirk Miller accepted a contract offer by the Bozeman AA district on May 21. He previously served as assistant superintendent for the dist r i c t . Th i s i s Parman’s second stint as a superintendent of public schools, having served in that c a p a c i t y i n Shelby. “At a time w h e n H a v r e Public Schools is facing several diff i cul t i e s, i t makes great sense to have Dennis at the Helm,” Hanson said. Under the contract, Parman will be paid $96,500 annual salary. The fourpage contract also outlines his duties and their expectations plus defining his holidays and leaves of absence due to sickness, holidays, vacation and emergencies. The contract contains no extraneous costs to the district other than his family’s health insurance coverage. In years past, superintendent contracts also provided for cars and car insurance plus other fringe benefits, but his contract does not. “My base is $95,000 and there’s a $1,500 stipend for travel expenses within the district,” Parman said. “What you see is what there is. I was really insistent that I have a clean, simple contract, and when people look at it, that is what there is.” After the votes, Parman introduced recommendations for future superintendent evaluations that would allow the trustees more time to complete their evaluations and for review. Parman, who was technology director and handled curriculum assessment, federal programs and Indian education programs as the assistant Superintendent for Havre Public Schools, said he is looks forward to continuing the good relations he developed with the school board during his time as interim superinendent. “I’m really happy about the decisions that the board and I have made,” he said. “I felt really comfortable and welcome in the new position and I’m really looking forward to doing this work.” He also is comfortable and happy to be working with employees in the district. “Because I’ve been here for 10 years, hopefully, all of us know what needs to be done, how it needs to be done and can keep the wheels in motion,” Parman said. “ We have some challenges ahead of us, but they would have been there regardless of who was superintendent." One of his principle concerns is the drop in enrollment Havre Public Schools experienced this fall. Havre’s districts are down a total of 84 students 21 in the elementary district and 63 at the high school. Parman said the big drop at the high school was anticipated because “we had a larger class going out than we had coming in.” One bright spot is the increase of kindergartners this year. While grades 1-6 lost 11 students and 7-8 lost 12, kindergarten enrollment is up by two over last year. “Declining enrollment is always tough, but I’m confident that we’ll be able to meet the challenges that we’ve got,” Parman said. He said the level of state funding is tied to the number of students in the district, but that recent legislation could offset the loss through the district’s declining student population. “We’re anticipating out of the last legislative session that there will be a 1.86 percent increase in some of the state funding, the Average Number Belonging portion of state funding,” Parman said. “ And trustee (Norman) Proctor also pointed out that because of averaging, we wouldn’t be hit hard in one year. As enrollments decline, there’s averaging that is done.” Parman said some juggling may have to be done in the district’s budget to meet the needs of its employees. “In general terms, we can forecast that we can keep our budgets where they are, that would be great,” he said. “We are going to look at continuing to make Havre Public Schools an attractive place to come and work. Those (staff) raises aren’t in the budget, so we’ll have to make places in the budget where we can make up for that.”
