The Crookston Public Schools Negotiation/Personnel Committee met to discuss some personnel matters on Wednesday morning in the Administrative Offices Conference Room in the Crookston High School to discuss various items to be brought forward in the next School Board meeting’s Consent Agenda on September 26.
Out of State Teachers’ Salaries
After the Call to Order, Superintendent Dave Kuehn opened the meeting to discuss the salaries of substitute teachers. Particularly about raising the salary of substitute teachers to show them their value as a part of the school and encourage them to stay with the school district. Kuehn presented a table of all of the local school district’s daily salaries for their teachers and revealed Crookston paid about $135, which was right in the middle of the pay range of the other schools, which ranged from $125 to $150, though many seemed ready to raise their range to around $140. After some discussion, the committee agreed that the school should increase the salary for substitute teachers by $10 to $145 and to make it an item in the School Board meeting’s consent agenda. “The world of substitute teaching is a hot market right now, so it’s competitive, and I think we want to take care of being competitive while also keeping the people that are loyal to the district and do sub for us, recognize that we are looking for raising the rate by $10 from $135 to $145 to yes, be competitive but also to make sure that we’re taking care of our own people that are subbing within our district,” said Dave Kuehn. “Again, we can’t afford to lose any of our employees, whether they’re custodians, teachers, paraprofessionals, or substitute teachers. So, we want to ensure we take good care of them while they’re in the Crookston School District so we can keep them and make sure that when one of our teachers are gone, we have them in place.”
Teachers’ Licenses
The next item of discussion was of teachers that needed Tier 1 Teaching Licenses. Superintendent Kuehn noted that there were a few issues of teachers without licenses and hoped to find a way to get them licenses to get them back in the school, as State Law requires teachers to have some form of teaching license for them to teach before students. Kuehn informed the committee that there were five different ways teachers could get licensed for whatever field they needed to be in or receive Out-Of-Field permission for teachers that may need to fill in for another teacher for a class they normally aren’t licensed for. “We talked through that a bit, as we’ve had some challenges. The State office that does the licensing sometimes doesn’t work as fast as we’d like them to, and sometimes, we’re hiring people in August, so it’s challenging trying to make sure that we have all of our teachers licensed by the first day of school, and we’re still kind of working on some licenses,” said Superintendent Kuehn. “When we have those cases, we have to put another licensed person in that room until we get the so-called unlicensed person ready to go. It creates some additional challenges and expenditures, but like every other district, we’re working through some of those staffing and licensing issues.”
Staff contracts
The committee then began discussing the contract of Highland Elementary Phys Ed Teacher Scott Oliver, who counted as a retired teacher after working several years in many school districts. While the school has had teachers retire from the district and then be rehired again, the school gives them a different contract from the ones they give new teachers. However, Oliver did not retire from the Crookston School District, so he was still entitled to the benefits of the job. The committee realized there was a section of Oliver’s contract that confused these benefits for him and would have to change and reapprove it at the School Board meeting on the 26.
The committee had a similar discussion of Activities Director Nate Lubarski’s contract being similar to a teacher’s even though he technical wasn’t one. The school had made a standalone contract with Lubarski, but they had to change some of the wording to make his contract more for an Administrator instead of a Tier 1 License Teacher for it to be approved at the School Board meeting on the 26.
One member of the committee asked about School Board member and Kindergarten teacher Adrianne Winger being eligible to stay on the School Board until the end of the year with her becoming a teacher, but Kuehn explained that as long as her salary as a school board member and as a teacher didn’t exceed $20,000, she was allowed to keep her position on the board until the end of her term. He also included that she wasn’t running for re-election in November and had removed her name from the ballot.
The Crookston School District will next meet for a regular meeting on Monday, September 26, in the Crookston High School Choir/Orchestra Room.
