The new search for a Nye County School District superintendent was discussed at length during the last board of trustees meeting in Gabbs.

Board President Harold Tokerud said Jack Keegan from the headhunting firm of Ray & Associates suggested advertisements for the vacancy should be posted in a national publication.

“He’s making recommendations that we advertise in Education Week. It comes out once a week. It’s an excellent magazine and I used it all my years as an administrator. It is expensive, but I’d recommend that we put the advertisement in there. Every superintendent in the country almost gets it. If they’re looking for a job, they can see it,” he said.

Also discussed was the salary for the position. The position pays $140,000 a year.

Board members addressed the idea of possibly raising that number.

“His second option was that we change the salary and his recommendation was that we move it to $150,000 from the $140,000. I’m going to put my two cents in; I think we ought to leave it at $140,000 but I’m going to leave it to the consensus of the board,” Tokerud said.

Trustee Edna Forsgren sided with Tokerud on keeping the original salary.

She also offered up the suggestion that the search should be restricted to Nye County.

“I think I have to agree with you, we’re in a budget crunch. Everything we look at. We’re close to $3 million short for next year. Everything we do with him costs money and I still think we ought to look right in our own county and offer it to people who live within the district and have worked for it and dedicated their lives to Nye County,” she said.

Forsgren also made the point that localizing the search would save the district money.

“We pay for interviews, we pay for people coming in, we pay for ads. I think it all adds up and I don’t think it goes over very big with our community when everything is money right now. I look at it as a taxpayer too,” she noted.

Trustee Pam Lewis agreed with Forsgren and took her suggestion one step further by questioning the usefulness of Ray & Associates to assist in finding a suitable super.

Tokerud countered Lewis’ suggestion by informing the board that the district already has money invested in the search.

“I think we should continue. We just can’t drop that investment,” he said.

After agreeing to keep the present salary and advertise for the position in Education Week, the board discussed setting a deadline date for the search process to begin.

Tokerud told members that Ray & Associates wanted to start after the holidays.

He suggested that time frame would mean the search would continue through March 2012.

Tokerud wanted the process to begin much sooner.

“I really don’t want to go into another year. We’d like to have this wrapped up in the middle of February,” he said.

Trustee Traci Ward said she preferred to have the process begin in November.

In the end, Tokerud told the board he would confer with Ray and Associates about having the search begin earlier.

The agenda item will appear again at the next meeting.

Once a new superintendent is hired, he or she may have to deal with impending budget cuts.

The district was forced to lay off more than 50 faculty members over the summer to help shore up a $3.7 million shortfall for the 2011-12 school year.

In 2010, the cuts were even more drastic as 70 jobs were wiped out to cover a $6.5 million deficit.

District Chief Financial Officer Ray Ritchie brought more potentially grim news to the board.

Ritchie said the district can expect even more budget cuts in the coming year due to the steep drop in student enrollment throughout the district.

“When you’re looking at DSA numbers for next year, which is $6,692 per student, that would be a loss of more than $2.1 million dollars in the DSA unless the student count goes up,” he said.

DSA is the Distributive Student Account where the state pays schools for each student enrolled and attending class.

The district has seen a 324-student reduction since last school year.

DSA aside, Ritchie also noted that even more funds could dry up if the Secure Rural Schools SRS funds evaporate.

“The only other thing that we know and it’s questionable, is the SRS money that we’ve had for the last four or five years, that has a potential to go away. If you look at their website, it says it’s going away. If you read the Pahrump Valley Times last week, it said that SRS was reauthorized for another five years, but we don’t know. We’re trying to research that and find out if that has indeed been passed in the house and the senate,” he said.

Ritchie was referencing an Oct. 19 PVT article regarding U.S. Senator Harry Reid’s co-sponsorship of the County Payments Reauthorization Act of 2011, where he announced a bipartisan agreement on the bill to reauthorize SRS and Payments in Lieu of Taxes PILT programs for five more years.