SIDNEY-- Sidney High School Assistant Principal Whitney Hurt has been chosen as the new Director of Student Services for Sidney Public Schools.

The announcement was made in the Monday, December 11 school board meeting.

Hurt takes on her new duties at the start of the 2024-2025 school year.

"Starting next fall, I will be the Student Services Director for Sidney Public Schools. Mr. (Andrew) Farber, our superintendent, decided that developing the student services director position would be good for Sidney Public Schools. A lot of the duties that would be required of that position are things, many things that I'm currently doing for Sidney Public Schools, and have been for the last few years," Hurt said.

The concept of a Student Services Director was proposed by Farber to the school board earlier this year. Hurt said she applied for the position because much of the requirements are within what she is currently doing.

"That is something he had decided. Since there was a lot of pieces to it that I'm currently involved with now, and I have the history of what Sidney has done, I just thought it would be a good fit for me," she said.

Sidney School District Superintendent Andrew Farber said the goal is to focus on one of the higher-needs areas of the student population: special education.

"Our feeling was that we have a large number of students that have special needs ranging from speech to individual learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities. Our feeling as a district was an opportunity to hire an individual that could assist us in helping all of those individual students. We interviewed six candidates. They came from all over. We were very fortunate because they came from multiple areas.  We had a few internal candidates. Miss Hurt was one of them; very good competition. Everybody interviewed very well," he said.

Hurt has been involved in special education since she started with the district in 2005. She earned her teaching endorsements in K-6 special education, 7-12 special education and business education. She graduated with her Master's degree in 2010 and has an English learning endorsement. She has also earned her administrative coursework through Chadron State College.

She said the new position allows her to be focused on special education, and be more involved and visible in a program that offers services to kids birth to age 21.