The ConVal School Board agreed to carve out an exception from district policy to allow Board members more leeway to serve as substitutes at the schools if necessary, as well as another exception to let district teachers tutor students.
The first of these was brought up by Board Chair Tim Theberge, who said he encountered the language in the policy while anticipating the threat of government shutdown last week and the necessity of him potentially substituting.
The policy in question deals with conflict of interest in School Board members and their ability to earn money from the district. If enough Board members worked as substitutes in the district for more than a few days, Theberge said, they would exceed the $200 limit laid out in the policy.
“This was something to consider, that we may want to consider an exception or a carve out for those of us that might end up substituting in the district,” Theberge said.
Even without a government shutdown causing staffing difficulty in the district, the situation is fairly serious, according to Superintendent Kimberly Rizzo Saunders, who said that the district has administrators substituting on a daily basis.
“It is a very real issue,” Theberge said.
The exception to this policy will last for the next 90 days.
Along similar lines, the Board discussed tutoring on two fronts, the first being the district’s hiring of two individuals to serve as tutors for homebound students. Rizzo Saunders said that the estimate would be for them to work 20 hours a week for hourly pay. She then requested that the Board provide an exception to another policy that prohibits district teachers from receiving pay for tutoring students.
“This is going to open it up so they have a larger pool of people who could do this,” Rizzo Saunders said, referring to homebound instruction.
The passed exception will last through the end of the school year.
The Board also discussed last week’s public forum and the positive response from the community.
“I haven’t heard any negatives about the meeting, people were very excited about it,” said Dublin representative Alan Edelkind. He pointed out some points to learn from for future forums, including that last week’s had “too many presentations.”
“There will be another, that was the first,” said Theberge. “We had some good lessons from that, and we’ll have another in the next quarter sometime.”