The Jefferson School Committee continued moving forward Sept. 9 regarding their vote to keep “specials” of art, music, and physical education at Jefferson Village School at half-time this year, but an influx of secondary students in town may affect future plans.
According to AOS 93 Superintendent Steve Bailey, Jefferson budgeted for the equivalent of 94.5 public and private secondary students for the 2014-2015 school year, but 108 secondary students are currently enrolled.
The additional students represent a $134,000 cost that was not budgeted for, Bailey said.
The school committee discussed budget freezes and possibly going to the townspeople for funds to cover the increase, but no decision was made.
Bailey said he and school committee chair Robert Westrich will continue to discuss the issue through September, and the committee will likely take the issue up again after the Oct. 1 enrollment figures come through.
The additional enrollment costs will also need to be discussed in reference to the hiring of two educational technicians, Bailey said.
The committee voted Aug. 4 to hire two ed techs to help improve test scores and classroom instruction in lieu of increasing the specials from half-time to 0.8 of full-time.
The specials were cut from full-time to half-time in the last school year’s budget, and a partial restoration to 0.8 was included in this year’s budget in a 3-2 split vote April 7.
In another 3-2 vote Sept. 9, the committee approved eliminating the 0.8 positions and contracts for the school’s music and physical education teachers effective Dec. 23, and to create new half-time positions which would be offered to the teachers.
According to Westrich, it was the opinion of the school’s attorney the board’s April 7 vote to increase the specials in this year’s budget was an official vote that created the 0.8 positions for the music and physical education teachers.
Therefore, any changes from that is considered a reduction in force and the school must follow procedure in the teachers’ contracts, Westrich said.
The reduction of the two positions to half-time will save about $33,000 for the year, according to Bailey, but the hiring of two ed techs from Oct. 1 to June 30 is estimated to cost about $41,126, leaving about $8,100 that would need to be made up.
If the ed techs were not hired until December, it would roughly make up the difference, Bailey said.
No decision on when to hire the ed techs was made, and Bailey said Sept. 10 plans are to put out an anticipated opening until the committee discusses the issue further.
Prior to the vote on the music and physical education positions, discussions centered on time, such as the time specials teachers could spend assisting in other classrooms and the amount of specials instruction students get in a week.
Heather Northrup, the second grade teacher at JVS, said with 25 students in her class this year, she will be able to cover the curriculum for her students but not necessarily give them the individual attention she normally would.
Northrup asked the committee to reconsider keeping the specials at 0.8, arguing the three certified teachers could assist in classrooms during downtime for less money than hiring two ed techs.
The specials teachers have been utilized this way in the past, including recent years when test scores at JVS were up, she said.
“It sounds like a win-win,” Westrich said.
Committee member Shawn St. Cyr said the $8,100 would pay to have two education technicians in classrooms full-time, five days a week, and a reorganization of the specials teachers’ schedules could also add specials time for the students.
Basing it on the art teacher’s current half-time schedule, the position is only scheduled for instruction seven out of 11 possible instruction hours, St. Cyr said.
JVS Principal Peter Gallace said there are several factors that play into the art teacher’s current utilization.
One factor is the specials are scheduled in the late morning and afternoon to avoid interrupting literacy and math periods in the morning – subjects that have been identified as a priority, officials said.
The specials teachers also work with students on programs that are not listed on the schedule and currently assist other teachers as well, Gallace said.
If the positions were changed to be half-time over five days a week, students could have an hour of instruction each week in each special, St. Cyr said.
St. Cyr questioned whether the specials positions should be increased in order to increase instruction time for students when a schedule reorganization might achieve the same result.
“The position can be half-time five days a week because that’s what the school needs it to be,” he said.
When it came to a vote, the committee voted 3-2, with Westrich and Joan Jackson dissenting, to eliminate the music and physical education teachers’ 0.8 positions and create the new half-time positions.
Baseball field
According to Westrich, personnel at the AOS 93 central office will be seeking estimates for the replacement and seeding of the top four inches of the Jefferson Village School’s baseball field.
The field was built in 2011 as part of the new Jefferson Village School, and was later found to be contaminated with glass, metal, oversized rocks, and other items.
The subcontractor that installed the school’s fields, George C. Hall & Sons, submitted a proposal in August to hand-pick and remove any stones large than 1-inch visible from the outfield’s surface, aerating and fertilizing again, reseeding any bare areas larger than 25-square inches with less than 90 percent coverage, and providing labor and equipment to replace the baseball infield material and replace it with new material paid for by the school.
The committee voted unanimously in August to reject to the proposal.
“We know what’s underneath and what happens with frost-heaving in Maine,” Westrich said.
St. Cyr said the school committee needs some hard and fast estimates from contractors on what it will cost to fix the field without Hall’s participation in order to evaluate whether arbitrating the issue is worthwhile.
Arbitration costs have been estimated at $30,000 and are not recoverable, so if the cost to fix the field is somewhat comparable it may not be wise to gamble on arbitration and maybe end up paying for both the arbitration and the field fix, he said.
Westrich also said Hall will be contacted with a deadline to submit a counter-proposal to fix the field.
The committee is already waiting for a response from Hall, St. Cyr said.
