Dr. Corbin Witt, USD 475 Superintendent of Schools, is back to work in the New Year. Witt took an extended leave of absence following a necessary back surgery and recovery.

“It’s great to be back at work and to get to work with this wonderful staff again, and serve the students of USD 475; it was a long time of recovery…but I’m extremely happy to be back and working with everyone,” said Witt.

One of the big items on his agenda this month will be the two planned town hall meetings to discuss and receive community feedback on the proposed new high school project.

“Any time that you’re looking at improving the school district, and improving the community it’s an exciting time; and going through and talking to the public and to find out what our public feels is something that I look forward and I think that will be a great opportunity,” said Witt.

The State Legislature will convene this month and one issue that is sure to linger throughout the legislative session is school funding. Witt said that he was a supporter of the final funding formula, noting that the Legislature didn’t want to fund it – and thus, the difficulty arose.

“I hope there’s something built in for Districts that serve higher-needs students, that recognize that and provide more support…I hope there’s some kind of at-risk component, and I would love to see them pay the excess cost for Special Education that they’ve stated they’d pay for a long time – which they’re not…I’d also love to see them fund kindergarten all day, right now we get half-time funding for kindergartners, and very few school districts have half-time kindergartners –  most have gone to full time, and I hope the State will pay the Districts for full time kindergarten,” said Witt.

Witt said that making sure [they] have the resources needed to serve the students is “huge”.