By Andrew Walsh
awalsh@wbcowqel.com
The Galion school board is putting in long hours in trying to get a handle on finances and other issues affecting the largest district in Crawford County. The board is hosting a work session as the first meeting of every other month, with the intention of furthering goals toward being financially sound and hearing input from the community about how best to run the district.
Wednesday night’s work session focused on cleaning up some contractual language the board has on the books.
The subject that was discussed the most had to do with the employee sick leave pool. This is meant to be a reserve pool that employees have access to in case of catastrophic circumstances which have caused them to exceed their normal allotment. Each employee is issued 15 sick days per, and these days accrue over the years, and as long as they have contributed one day of their yearly allotment to the pool they have access to it as a reserve.
In the current set up, if there 250 days in the pool, no more can be added. This has the potential to lock out new employees, who would not have the opportunity to add to the pool and therefore denying them access to it. In this past this 250 day limit has not necessarily been strictly enforced, and the board is discussing ways to bring the rules in line with the practices.
The other bit of language that needs to be cleared concerns teacher evaluations. There were some discrepancies in the language between the new teacher evaluation practices and school official policy, in particular the number of reviews a teacher up for renewal should have to undergo.
The new evaluation policy calls for three reviews unless the superintendent waives the third, and the current school policy only calls for a third review if the supervising principal found deficiencies in the first two and feels there is a need for the third. The new evaluation policy will have to be brought in line with the negotiated policy currently in use by the district.
Health insurance rates have gone up for the district. For the consortium in which they are involved, rates rose by 4.2 percent. For Galion the hike was 12 percent, due to the fact that they have been underpaying over the previous decade. Treasurer Terri Day reported that while Galion’s hike was higher, it was not the highest in the consortium. Some schools saw their rates rise as high as 20 percent and other schools saw their rates reduced. The goal was to bring the entire consortium into level pay rates.
The Galion Track and Cross Country Parents made a $500 donation to the Maggie Maloy Scholarship, and Lynne Goldsmith made a $3,000 contribution to the Larry Goldsmith Scholarship.
The next board meeting will be at 6:30 p.m., Sept. 18, in the Middle School Library.