Jefferson County Commissioners sign off on superintendent’s ‘Super Board’ setup
FAIRBURY, Neb. - The Fairbury school superintendent’s pitch for a so-called “Super Board” is one step closer to reality: the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners threw their support behind the idea Tuesday morning.
Now what exactly is a “Super Board?” It’s Fairbury School Superintendent Devin Embray’s proposal to bring a trio of governing bodies together to collaborate on shared concerns. The new committee would be composed of members from three key groups: Jefferson County officials, such as the commissioners or the treasurer; city of Fairbury officials, such as council members or the mayor; and Fairbury Public Schools officials, such as board members and the superintendent.
“I think what Dr. Embray’s idea is is ‘let’s sit down and talk’ because there are things that involve school and city, school and county, so let’s sit down and talk about it and see if there are issues, or some things that we can share with one another, positives or negatives, if things need directives,” Jefferson County Commissioner Gale Pohlmann said Tuesday.
This is a formula that Embray, who is Fairbury’s third superintendent in the last three years, has followed in previous stops in his career, and netted an “overwhelmingly positive” response from those city and county officials, he said in his proposal to the commissioners.
“This organization led to partnerships that yielded cost savings for taxpayers,” Embray stated in his proposal. “I believe this collaborative approach would be highly beneficial for Fairbury Public Schools, the city of Fairbury, and Jefferson County.”
Embray said Tuesday that, if this group is approved, the school system would tackle the setting of and presentation of the agenda, and the quarterly meetings would rotate between different locations: the school, the council chambers, the courthouse, and other places – “Somewhere on your turf, so to speak,” Embray told the commissioners Tuesday.
These meetings would not be open to the public because they would not fit the criteria for a public session, similar to when a council elects to hold a committee session. The procedure would be for the represented groups – the school board, the council and the commissioners – to then present a summary of their discussions and findings at their own respective public meetings, where citizens, press, and other interested parties can then contribute and ask questions.
For now, the proposed Super Board will only encompass Fairbury and its school system, but could be expanded to include schools from the many surrounding areas if the need arises.
“We don’t want to make it seem like we’re excluding the other schools or the rest of the villages, so maybe we make this board known, and if they [the other schools] want to send a representative, they can,” Pohlmann said.
As it is, the proposed Super Board was met with overwhelming support on Tuesday morning from the county’s three commissioners, who all gave their approval to begin to move the plans forward. Next, it’s up to the two other main parties to consider the same: the school board will discuss this proposal at their monthly meeting in October, and the city council, including Mayor Spencer Brown, is “highly interested” according to Embray and will get it on their agenda soon as well.