Staff Advisory Council Minutes
Division Updates:
Central Elementary:
Reps: Amy Conner and Maria Graff
Good news:
Good News: Pam Wishert is amazing! Fe Meadows and her team work so incredibly hard in very difficult jobs.
So true and thank you for recognizing these exceptional team members!
Staff Questions/updates:
1. Could male staff who are also bus drivers be given permission to wear school appropriate shorts on hot days?
We would be unable to establish a policy like this specific to males. Regarding use of shorts, in general, and any adaptations for hot days especially for bus drivers I will defer this question to the principal and will make myself available to help as needed.
2. Three bereavement days are not enough.
This issue was addressed in the August meeting responses.
3. It’s been suggested that staff receive mental health days due to the stress of the job.
Thank you for the feedback. Staff emotional and mental wellness is a priority. Additional non-instructional days can be added to the school calendar, but not without compensating with additional instructional days. Our calendar is currently only 174 instructional days, and I would not support decreasing that number in future calendars.
4. Could there be a work day for conferences? Perhaps operate it like back to school? 12-7? So many teachers have after school obligations and doing conferences only after school makes it hard to fit them all in.
Response
This was the feedback and response recorded in the September 2023 SAC minutes:
Question from Staff: Can we return to the way conferences used to be - meaning ½ day afternoon conferences on Thursday and morning conferences on Friday? Whatever is decided, it needs to be consistent throughout the county.
Response: Last year, elementary and secondary teachers, through the Staff Advisory Committee, expressed a desire to have their conferences scheduled at separate times. I will ask principals to gather feedback that best reflects the entirety of each school's staff, both for this coming February and next year's school calendar.
5. Planning equity within the building. Some teachers have zero, while others have 2 hours. Some aides have a planning period, while others have none. Some aides do not get lunch, but leave at 3:10? Is it OK that they do not get a break during the day?
This question is very school-specific and has been referred to the principal for resolution at the school level.
6. IAs, specifically SPED IAs need a raise! They all actually need a raise.
Thank you for the feedback and the support for our wonderful IA’s! I hope we are in a position to give another healthy salary increase this coming year!
7. We NEED another speech therapist. Too much paperwork, with the severity of needs increasing. Could we hire a therapist who only did evaluations for the whole county? Then the in-house therapists would only implement the services.
I understand the need and we have included this in our budget request for the past few years. Our staffing is compliant by state standards and this was not prioritized above staff salaries, holding staff harmless for insurance increases and mental health support last year. We will include it again this year because we do support the request and believe we need additional support.
9. We need more subs. Too many people (mostly aides) are being pulled from their very important jobs.
We continue to build our substitute pool:
Dr. Stribling holds monthly substitute workshops and recruitment
136 current substitutes
8 additional subs being onboarded after the September workshop
180 onboarded since 2021
37 onboarded since January 2024
10. Another concern about no recess aides. Any chance that we could budget for them for next year?
This issue was addressed in the August meeting responses.
11. The cost of lunch for staff is very high, with not a lot of food served. Is there any way a staff member with food allergies can substitute a side for the main meal (get a double serving of veggies instead of the main entree). We miss the ala carte options.
$5.50 is the cost to produce the adult meal. Adult meals aren't eligible for Federal reimbursement; therefore all associated costs must be covered through the meal price.
All adult meals include: 1 meat, 1 grain, 2 vegetables, 2 fruits and 1 milk.
Vegetable trays are available for students and staff. It would include all of the above except the meat.
Milk, entree items (all schools) & snacks (FMS & FHS) are available a la carte. We are discussing opportunities to expand a la carte options.
12. Another big concern about the amount of time IAs are pulled to sub/cover classes. When they are pulled, it GREATLY impacts students and classroom teachers as well as the IA. The IA knows they are not able to do their job and worry about the students that are not being serviced. One IA has already been pulled 6 days, another 8 days.
This is without question a significant problem. We are onboarding substitutes as quickly as possible and there are quite a few who have been added to our list of available substitutes. Staff absences have increased and the number of available substitutes has not kept up. Often schools have to choose between reassigning a staff member or leaving a classroom full of students without an adult.
12. We are drowning in this new curriculum. Too much, too fast with little to no training. “drowning, lost, floundering, feeling inadequate ... .just a few of the words to describe the feeling Not to mention new math SOLs…
The literacy training that was secured for back to school week did not meet expectations, nor did it provide the level of support needed to be prepared with implementation of the new curriculum for the start of school. We gradually phased in implementation of the curriculum the first month of school, and gave back necessary time to teachers to get to know students and establish routines. Moving forward, we have been leveraging PLC/planning time during the school day to schedule additional sessions for teachers to plan together and become familiar with curriculum materials. We realize this has not been ideal, with planning and assessment work typically being only a couple of weeks ahead of our pacing. We have additionally secured classroom coverage for September/October so that Elementary grade level staff are able to have a full day planning session together during the school day. If feedback is supportive of this time, we would like to build in this opportunity a few additional days throughout this year. In lieu of division professional development days this calendar year, we will be utilizing staff days to continue to work in grade level teams and address curriculum planning for new math and literacy SOLs. We recognize that the required VLP training and implementation of new Math SOLs, in addition to the new literacy curriculum and assessments, has been incredibly challenging to manage, and encourage everyone to extend grace and patience - we will get through this!
Carysbrook Elementary:
Reps: Michelle Ryman and Jennifer Flood
Good news:
Staff Questions:
How would you like us to handle students who are wearing smartwatches?
The new final guidance related to Cell Phone Free Education was just recently released and we are working to make any necessary policy adjustments that may need school board review. Smart watches are included in what must be stored during the day and our expectations will be clearly communicated to families and students.
More planning time is needed. It is understood that we need to be available for our students, but could we be more creative in our staffing? Could it be a teacher from the community combined with an aide who is familiar with those students? It is difficult as a teacher to see staff able to have more planning than others, even across buildings. *Update - Mr. Lucas is having sub additional lunch duty coverage to help teachers with planning time.
This question is very school-specific and has been referred to the principal for resolution at the school level.
FMS:
Reps: Chris Gresham and Tonya Lloyd
Good News:
Staff Questions:
Was more pay for covering classes approved in the budget for this year? If so, my paycheck stub I received today does not reflect that. Thank you!
Yes, an increase was approved and should be reflected in this year’s pay. The rate went from $25 per class period to $27. Mrs. Grasser reached out to all employees who were impacted. A correction will be made in the October 20 payroll to those who were not paid correctly in September.
How absolutely horrible this conference experience has been. It has been a nightmare creating and maintaining a schedule.
Each year we respond to feedback received from staff in designing the calendar and conference schedule, specifically. We will do that again this year and hope next year’s schedule is a better experience for those who would like something different.
FCHS:
Reps: Haden Parrish, Shannon Taylor, and Luke Divine
Good News
Securly is helping to reduce the number of students in the halls during class time.
Staff Questions:
Concern with the number of days some students miss for vacations/family travel
I understand the concern. We are unable to control those family decisions.
Thinking about the budget for next year and the recent school shootings, should we do a threat assessment (by an outside third party that specializes) in all our buildings? Also, should we equip all classroom doors with automatic locks? Teachers should not be expected to stop teaching every time a student enters and exits to relock the door.
The assessment is a great idea! We already do an extensive assessment developed by the DCJS annually at each facility. We will explore what a true third-party assessment would entail and the cost.
Door lock solutions are being evaluated by our maintenance team and once the data is gathered we will review with our school board for consideration.
Can the speed bump by the Staff Parking have the missing piece replaced? Students/Parents are flying out of the school because they don't have to slow down for the speed bump. (The piece is laying in the grass)
Yes, Mrs. Bruce is taking care of resolving this.
For the last few years teachers at the high school have been talking about/requesting doors that automatically stay locked on classroom doors, even when someone exits. The reason we are repeatedly given for this not occurring is that it is a big expense and it has to go through the budget cycle, so we have to wait for the next budget cycle. So here we are several years later: Can it go through the budget cycle this year please? Automatically locking doors were key to recent events at other schools not becoming more deadly; it seems serious consideration of such an expense would be worthwhile.
See above regarding the door solutions - they are being investigated and considered. They have also been part of the budget considerations each year, and will again this year.
Some of our classes are very much struggling with technology as it currently stands. Our AP and dual-enrollment classes, importantly, and among others, have research expectations and assignments that are contingent on them being able to access information for research purposes. Securly in its current mode is inhibiting their academic pursuits to a significant degree at this point. The options offered thus far to attempt to mitigate the issue have been that sites can be unblocked as we find them (our ITRT has even super graciously offered to come into our rooms when we do research--that is very much appreciated, but still will not functionally address the issue because it is not with knowledge-level or know how, but rather accessibility) Those of us who have completed research in our academic careers know these proposed solutions are unrealistic. One has to be able to see search results and webpages to even evaluate their usefulness and purposes within the scope of research. Further, the new English SOLs have requirements regarding multimodal literacies and research that will be unobtainable when students cannot function in an evaluative manner as researchers. What compounds all of this additionally is that we don't find out what students can or cannot do until they can or cannot do it, at times making plans for required assignments futile.
Rather than paraphrase, I am including this response from our Director of Technology:
I'm sorry for the frustrations with student access to online content. Our technology team has to take the online security of the division very seriously since there are many threats online by foreign countries (such as China, Russia, Iran, N. Korea) and other hacker groups that are focusing on U.S. school divisions because of the amount of Personal Identifiable Information that we have and how valuable that is. Any website has the potential to be infected with malware or ransomware and the latter of those can lead to a significant cost to the division as well as the worst case scenario of student and staff Personal Identifiable Information being stolen.
We have partnered with the Center of Internet Security and one of the things they recommend that we do is prevent access to web sites that are not categorized with a positive reputation or are listed as “uncategorized” in our content filter. The sites that are uncategorized are either very young and haven't developed a reputation yet or are still being evaluated for whether they are safe or not and that takes time. As you and your students come across sites that they need access to, please submit help desk tickets for us to review and possibly unblock them. Thank you for your understanding.
The students may submit student helpdesk tickets that include the URLs they need access to and Chris and Kristen will pass them along to Joe. They can cut and paste the URL under "Other".