The Blairsville-Saltsburg School Board last night discussed educating their students on the opioid epidemic.
The discussion, lead by board member Rick Harper, focused on the statistic that Indiana County has seen a 41% increase in opioid-related deaths over the last year. He formed his own group including health and physical education teachers to talk about how drug education can be improved. Harper said that one of the ideas that they formulated was to have speakers who have gone through the drug experience and survived. He felt that those speakers had more impact with the students, and they paid more attention to them rather than to police officers or teachers speaking on the same subject.
In other business, the board approved motions to rescind their vote from December to hire Ryan Kirsch as the district’s business manager, and they approved hiring Gary A. Zuchelli pending board approval of his contract. The reason why the board rescinded Kirsch’s hiring was because Kirsch did not accept the job offer the district made. Finally, the board approved a collective bargaining agreement with the SEIU local 32BJ Custodians union, which calls for salary increases over the next three years.
