BERNE — The school district here has hired three speech pathologists of its own rather than using the service it had relied on for 15 years.

At the same time, the school board has accepted the resignation of the specialist it hired less than six months ago to integrate technology into the curriculum.

With just one tech staff member left, the district worked “feverishly,” the superintendent said, and has arranged to have services provided through the Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

At Monday’s school board meeting, Peter Scotto, president of Advanced Therapy PLLC, defended his company, which offers occupational, speech, and physical therapy services. His company had provided services to BKW for 15 years.

Also at Monday’s meeting, the school board voted unanimously to hire three in-house speech therapists as part of its personnel consent agenda.

At the school board’s July meeting, as several board members pushed to have BKW hire one therapist in-house, rather than following Superintendent Timothy Mundell’s recommendation to use therapists from Advanced Therapy exclusively, the school board’s president, Matthew Tedeschi had said, “They probably will not work for the rest of summer school.”

Susan Sloma, director of pupil personnel services, had echoed that concern, saying of the Advanced Therapy therapists, “As of tomorrow morning in summer school, they could pull out.”

Scotto said on Monday that neither he nor his company had threatened to remove its summer services for the school, and said that the request for proposals was for two-and-a-half positions.

Scotto has told The Enterprise after the board’s July meeting, “None of the staff would leave.” None did. The Advanced therapy workers completed their summer-school duties. Scotto had also said that, with school budget issues and monthly board meetings, it was not unusual to have his staff work without a contract.

Scotto on Monday also defended back-to-back therapy sessions that had been scheduled for a BKW student last fall.

“We had a bad situation … ,” he said. “We tried to present solutions.”

In the end, BKW hired these three in-house speech-language pathologists: Ashley Rapsard, on the first step of a BKW Teachers’ Association contract, for $40, 506 annually; Robin Anderson on the third step for $44,384; and Shelley VanPatten, also on the third step, for $44,384.

Each has had past experiences at colleges, schools, or other institutes, Mundell said, going over the particulars.

He also said that the school needed therapists for 72.5 hours of work each week; each therapist can meet with students 25 hours each week, meaning the school will need to hire three therapists.

Board member Helen Lounsbury asked if Scotto had been approached about having therapists hired through his company rather than hired by the school.

Mundell said that he had spoken with Scotto about hiring one-and-a-half staff members, but he said Scotto did want to go through with that.

“He was very clear about that,” he said. “He wants all or nothing, he wants two-and-a-half,” said Mundell of the posts Scotto sought.

Mundell added that Scotto had had prior poor experiences working in districts where his employees had to work with in-district hires.

Resignation woes

The board accepted three resignations on Monday: one for bus driver Kamber Domermuth; another for the head bus driver, Phil Sperry; and a third for Lisa Cala-Ruud, who had been hired in late February as the technology integration specialist.

Hers was the fifth administrative role in the district. The new post had an annual salary of about $80,000. Cala-Ruud had been tasked with working with teachers to use instructional technology.

Cala-Ruud had been involved with developing the capital project — which includes $5 million in upgrades to technology at the secondary school — as well as helping the district complete its current instructional technology plan, something that all New York State schools are required to submit every three years to the State Education Department by October.

Cala-Ruud could not be reached by The Enterprise before press time.

Cala-Ruud’s departure, along with previous resignations from the technology department, leaves Holly Clark currently as the sole tech-support staff member; she was promoted on Monday from a “Help-Desk Trainee” to a help-desk technician.

“That puts a lot, obviously, on Holly,” noted board member Randy Bashwinger, after learning of the resignations.

Mundell said that the district has been “working feverishly” with the state’s Board of Cooperative Educational Services for the last three weeks. BKW has since “scoped out a technology service with BOCES” to serve the district with a help-desk technician and an administrative post, Mundell said.

Business manager Stacy King-McElhiney said that the positions would be served by a team of people from BOCES who would come in on different days. The superintendent said that the district would save money this way, and that BOCES would help the district update its phone system.

Following the resignation of Sperry, the board agreed to abolish the position and instead create two part-time clerical positions: one will cover three-and-a-half hours in the morning and the other will cover three-and-a-half hours in the afternoon.

Mundell said that the head bus driver position had been created in 2015, and that Sperry had been qualified to administer examinations for bus drivers’ certifications. Mundell said that the transportation director, Amy Santandrea, and another driver are both certified examiners as well.

“We’ve been strapped for bus drivers,” said Mundell, focusing on another problem.

No one is staffing the bus garage when Santandrea is forced to be on the road during the day due to a shortage of drivers.