Friday, June 30, 2006
A popular home economics teacher cut earlier this year has been recalled.
By D.A. WILKINSON
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
SALEM -- Teachers will begin paying 10 percent of the cost of their health care premiums under an agreement approved Thursday by the Salem Board of Education.
Teachers will also get no raise in the first year of the three-year pact.
Teachers will get 2.5 percent increases in each of the second and third years. The raises will cost about $250,000 each year.
Step increases on the salary scale will cost about $190,000 each year, according to Alice Gunning, the district treasurer.
Superintendent Stephen Larcomb said that because of the payments toward health insurance and the pay freeze, the district will save about $190,000 in the first year of the pact and $55,000 in each of the remaining years.
Teachers, along with nonteaching workers, had been paying nothing toward insurance premiums.
Larcomb praised the workers for agreeing to the contracts.
The district overall is ending the year slightly more than $1 million in debt, Gunning said.
Voters in May approved a five-year levy for operating costs. Gunning expects the district will end the 2006-07 school year with a $175,000 balance. Larcomb has said he expects it will take two years before the district's finances return to normal.
The district this year also lost $73,000 in its food service program. The contract for the food service provider was not renewed for the next school year. Gunning said she wasn't sure why the program had lost money.
Middle school
In other action, the board agreed to negotiate with Kent State University, which may take the closed middle school.
KSU officials were at the meeting but left without comment about how they might use the facility. Larcomb did not know KSU's plans.
The school district had been debating what to do with the aging building. The board closed the building at the end of the 2005-06 school year. Pupils will transfer to the high school.
The property has a value of $240,000, according to Larcomb.
The board also voted to recall popular high school home economics teacher Henry Brock from the list of teachers cut by the district earlier this year.
Larcomb said there was debate over whether the school needed a third home economics class. Larcomb said he believed it did. About 35 students appeared at the meeting.
Board members Joe Rottenborn and Sean Hart praised Brock for his positive effect on students.
Rottenborn, a veteran educator, said he had heard of a student who had initials engraved in his class ring that stood for, "What Would Hank Brock Do?"
wilkinson@vindy.com