Published: November 20, 2009 07:15 pm      

Valentine says he won’t accept CFO’s resignation

Asks GCCS board members, community to step up, keep Collesano

During a short, special Greater Clark County Schools board meeting, attention turned from the only agenda item, health insurance, to Chief Financial Officer Frank Collesano’s recent announcement of his resignation.

With Collesano and a few others in attendance Friday morning, Robbie Valentine, board secretary, decided to speak out during the school board member comment portion of the meeting.

“I’m just going to say to you, personally from Robbie Valentine, on record, that I am not accepting your resignation and I hope the board follows suit, as I am sure they are going to,” Valentine said.

After the meeting, Valentine said the board has not received Collesano’s resignation as of yet.

“I’m not voting on it. I haven’t see it. I’m not supporting it and I’m publicly saying it,” Valentine said. “I’m not supporting his resignation.”

However, a public records request by The Evening News showed that Collesano sent his resignation at 9:04 a.m., Nov. 10, via e-mail to Superintendent Stephen Daeschner. It did not state a reason, only saying that his resignation is effective Jan. 1.

Collesano began work in early August. He previously told The Evening News that his reasoning for leaving is missing retirement and issues with the school board lacking confidence in him. He also left open the option of returning after about a month, for possible part-time work.

Later the day that Collesano announced his resignation, he had two of his recommendations turned down by the board. One was for an architect to build Charlestown High School’s auto-tech facility and the other was for an additional 4-wheel drive vehicle to patrol the roads in the winter.

He said previously that he had never had a request pulled or voted down in his 26-year career working with school boards until coming to Greater Clark.

“Especially as the CFO, if you’re bringing a financial issue before the board, you would hope that they would think you had the money available to take care of the item you’re proposing, but then to get turned down — because they questioned whether you had the money or not — is kind of, you know, take it for what it’s worth,” he said in a previous interview.

Valentine said he’s urging everyone in the community and those who work for Greater Clark to tell Collesano to stay. He also said he is urging the entire board to vote no on his resignation to make a point.

“Part of the reason he’s leaving is because of us 7,” Valentine said of the school board. “Let’s be honest. Part of us keeping him is going to be us 7.”

However, not all are on board with him.

“I’m not in the position of begging people to stay. Whatever [Collesano] decides, that’s fine,” said Christina Gilkey, board vice president. “I’ll support him if he decides to stay and I’ll support him if he decides to go.”

Even if the board does not eventually approve the resignation, which takes effect Jan. 1, Donna Mullins, director of human resources for GCCS, said it’s not needed. However, she said filling such an important role by January will be difficult.

“It worries me,” she said of finding someone by then. “I know we’ll have a hard time finding someone of his caliber. That would be a quick search if we were able to find someone that quick. I hope that he does reconsider. He’s meant a lot to us.”

“We need him here. Fact. We need him here,” Valentine said. “He loves kids. Everything he does, the bottom line is always kids.”

During Collesano’s time at Greater Clark, he’s already made a number of changes, including increasing the amount of money the district is earning in its investments, getting the construction projects moving on schedule, having construction companies pay for change orders that weren’t requested by Greater Clark, moving construction time to after school hours at Jeffersonville High School, building the 2010 budget from scratch to get rid of the deficit and more.

Collesano said he had no comment on what Valentine said at the meeting.



HEALTH INSURANCE

Greater Clark’s partially self-funded health insurance model is going to protect employees from having to pay higher premiums, according to Nick Wiese, teacher’s association president.

Pepper Cooper, insurance agent of record for Greater Clark, said in the past 18 months, Greater Clark has saved up $988,974.34 due to the partially self-funded model. However, an insurance increase will take away $867,338.66 of that. He said that keeps the employer and employee from having to pick up those additional fees. He said if things continue as they are now, that savings fund will grow to about $1.7 million in a year.

Wiese said all the bids from various insurance companies came in high, so Greater Clark decided to keep with Humana, who they currently use.