Fairfield school board discusses early retirement

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield Community School District Board of Directors met Monday for a work session.

Among the topics discussed was whether the board should look into offering teachers early retirement. Superintendent Laurie Noll said early retirement can be a cost-saving measure if the district replaces a tenured employee with a newer one.

She said the board agreed the idea was worth looking into and plans to discuss it further at the next meeting. Noll said the district has not offered early retirement to its teachers 'in quite some time.”

The board decided that its January meeting will be held on the fourth Monday instead of the typical third Monday to accommodate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is the third Monday, Jan. 18. Students will not have school that day or the next day, which is a teacher work day.

The district's winter break will last from Dec. 21 until Jan. 4, when students return to school. Students and staff are currently in an online-only format, which the district began on Nov. 16. Last week, it was granted a waiver from the Iowa Department of Education to remain in a virtual format through Dec. 11. Noll said she can't say when administrators will decide what happens after Dec. 11, if the district will remain online-only or if it will return to the hybrid model it began the school year in whereby half of instruction was in-person and half was online.

'You don't want to go too far out, but you still want to give families as much lead time as possible to help them make adjustments,” Noll said.