BENTONVILLE — Deans will become part of the Bentonville High School staff this fall.
The school will get three deans to deal primarily with attendance and discipline issues, allowing its administrators time to focus on academic matters, said Galen Havner, district director of human resources.
The School Board approved the move with a 7-0 vote Monday.
The three deans will replace one unfilled assistant principal’s position for a net cost of $120,000 per year. They will be paid like teachers rather than administrators.
“I hate to spend money, but the reality is we haven’t spent any money on increasing administration (at the high school) in seven years,” said Grant Lightle, a School Board member, at Monday’s board meeting.
Lightle, chairman of the board’s Personnel Committee, said assistant principals are spending a lot of time on things such as tracking down students.
“That’s not a good use of their time,” he said.
Bentonville High School’s enrollment has grown 31 percent since the 2006-07 school year, but since then the school has added only one counselor and no administrators. Bentonville High also added a zero period during the 2010-11 school year that increased administrators’ workdays.
The school has a principal, associate principal and five assistant principals serving about 3,900 students. Enrollment is projected to increase to 4,100 next year.
The deans haven't been hired yet, but should be within two weeks, Havner said.
Bentonville High School also is hiring an eighth counselor and changing its counseling structure.
Counselor responsibilities are tied to the school’s learning communities, Lightle said. Under the new system about to be implemented, two counselors will be assigned permanently to the freshman class. The school will assign two counselors to each of the other three classes, and those counselors will “loop” or stay with students through the rest of their high school years.
Also on Monday, the board approved promoting Tanya Vaughn from math teacher to assistant principal at the high school to replace Shirley Coleman, who is retiring.
Vaughn is in her first year teaching at Bentonville High School. She was a math teacher, coach and assistant athletic director in Scottsbluff, Neb., for 17 years before coming to Bentonville.