At the March 18 meeting of the Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corporation school board, RBBCSC Superintendent Steven Kain recommended restricting the hours of employees who work 30 hours a week. The recommendation comes ahead of the required May 1 implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. All board members were present.
The act will require the school to provide health insurance to 95% of its employees working 30 hours a week. For RBBCSC, that includes 43 instructional assistants, nine bus drivers, and five bus monitors. The cost to the school, if all 57 employees took family health insurance, would be $953,769.60.
“Initially, we thought 30 hours a week was no problem, at least, the attorney did,” Kain said.
Since the employees do not work during the summer, the school corporation was under the impression they could use that to reduce their average hours per week for the year and avoid counting them as full-time employees. The IRS has since told it that it could not do that.
The act will also affect substitute teachers and, potentially, lay coaches. Substitute teachers will no longer be able to work more than three days a week under Kain’s recommendation, while lay coaches remain a question mark.
If the school corporation fails to pay for health insurance for 95% of its eligible employees, it will be subject to a fine of $538,000.
“It’s going to impact a lot of our employees,” Kain said. “We can’t afford to offer insurance to all those people.”
The board will consider Kain’s recommendation for a vote at its April 15 meeting.
Anti-Bullying Task Force Chairman Jerry Pittsford delivered the task force’s policy recommendations to the board, which largely consisted of changes in the language of the policy to make it more clear and allow those accused of bullying recourse. To that end, the complainant would no longer be able to remain anonymous.
“It’s very difficult to investigate an instance of bullying when you don’t know who the person being bullied is,” Pittsford said, noting the importance of being able to look into both sides of the story.
Language was also added to give the accused an opportunity to appeal an administrator’s decision if they found it unreasonable. Previous language only gave the complainant that opportunity.
Other recommendations made by the task force include requiring building administrators to prepare a biannual report on all bullying instances in their schools and the actions taken to deal with them. Principals and program directors would also establish bullying awareness training for school faculty. Finally, the task force recommended that it reconvene no later than March 2014 to review the policy again.
Independent of the task force, Pittsford recommended that the school look into bringing in an outside investigator to deal with the issue.
“In some cases, students find it difficult to speak to people in positions of authority,” the chairman said.
He suggested one possibility could be developing a partnership with the Indiana University Department of Sociology and bringing in a graduate student to help.
“Right now, if we had to go to a private outside source, we fear that the cost might be more than we could bear,” he said.
A community forum on bullying will be held March 25 at 7 p.m. in the Edgewood High School auditorium. The forum will be a panel discussion with panelists Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Steven Galvin, Monroe County Juvenile Probation Supervisor Christine McAfee, Ellettsville Town Marshal Tony Bowlen, Sgt. Randy Jacobs of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, and Monroe County Deputy Juvenile Prosecutor Rich Hansen. It will be moderated by Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Frances Hill.
EHS teachers Larry DeMoss and Doug Uhls presented a plan for a hybrid class schedule for the next academic year. In it, students would attend classes four times a week – three times in a 45-minute session and once in a 90-minute session.
According to DeMoss, changing the schedule to this would have several advantages. Classes with labs required by the state would have more time to complete them, advanced classes would be better able to research and discuss class topics, and the schedule might combat the reduced attention spans that come as a side effect of short class periods.
“We’re not suggesting that we stand there and lecture for an hour and a half,” DeMoss added.
The extra time would allow teachers to mix teaching methodologies, as well as implement better training for standardized testing.
The schedule met approval from teachers, according to Uhls, at a ratio of three to one. Most of those opposed were in the foreign language department because it would mean that they would have one less day of contact with students.
The school board offered several concerns, including B lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays being pushed back 55 minutes, while A lunch was only 10 minutes later, but the board was told the decision was not up to them.
Assistant Superintendent Carol Gardiner reported that a teacher appraisal rubric had been made up and she would be presenting it at the April school board meeting. As well, the school would be making a presentation to a selection committee for an e-learning grant that would help teachers learn and develop skills in the use of technology in the classroom.
The school received a $2,000 grant from First Books, which will help it purchase school books for children for the summer.
The next meeting of the RBBCSC school board will be held at 7 p.m. on April 15 at the School Service Center.
Originally published in Ellettsville Journal, 2013. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.