The Falls City Board of Trustees met March 19 and discussed a web site posting request.

Community member Steven Swierc requested from the board, that the district include certain public information on the district web site.

Swierc asked that the district would post on the district web site taxpayer-friendly information on salary, stipend and allowance amounts for the top 10 compensated employees of FCISD from the initial date of employment of the present superintendent to the date of his request. He also requested for the school district to post reasonably understandable annual school budget information for FCISD from the initial date of employment of the present superintendent to the date of his request. He also requested the posting of school board regular and special meeting minutes and a list of school district employees that are not living in the school district.

"Actually, I think if we posted what we pay our people, we’d never have anyone apply," Falls City ISD Board of Trustees President Raymond Dziuk said.

"TEA (Texas Education Agency) tells us what exactly we must put on our web site and that’s what we do," Superintendent Linda Bettin said. "The budget is on the web site already that’s state mandated, as well as… our agenda… we don’t have the minutes of the meeting on our website."

When Swierc asked to comment during discussion, Dziuk denied the request. According to Dziuk, the last meeting was "out of character of what the board usually does" by taking citizen participation into the meeting, he wanted to stay away from that during board discussion.

"As far as posting salaries and that, I’m against that," Dziuk said.

Dziuk wanted to find out how many "hits" the district web site receives per week, month or year.

According to Swierc, the posting of these items on the web site will enable the taxpayers of the school district to freely and easily monitor the basic functions of the district.

Swierc’s requests were not stated by Bettin, only board members had a copy and a copy was provided by Swierc to The Countywide.

According to Bettin, Swierc also had requested public information from the district that included, superintendent base salary, insurance contributions, stipends, moving or relocating expenses, automobile allowances (mileage), compensation, personal and professional development fees, meals, accommodations or any expenses paid by the district since the fist date of service by Bettin.

For the 2008-2009 school year, the board of trustees approved a local stipend for teachers with 20 or more years of service. According to Bettin, next year there will be 13 teachers that have 20 or more years with the district. The stipend is $1000.