BOE approves to reduce minimum contract days for school staff

A plan was put in place on Tuesday at the Guthrie Board of Education meeting. The school board unanimously agreed with a recommendation from the school’s superintendent on lowering the minimum number of contract days for the district’s support staff. Now, all parties are hopeful that plan never comes to fruition.

With the school’s legal counsel sitting next to him, Superintendent Dr. Mike Simpson made his recommendation on the reduction for all support staff members in front of several school staff members inside the Administration Building.

Guthrie News Page was at the meeting and the video can be viewed at the bottom of this article.

The recommendation comes as a result of the lack of funds from the financial crisis facing Oklahoma schools.

“The good news is no one is going to lose their job tonight,” the school district’s attorney John Moyer said in his opening statement. “The superintendent will ask the board to offer assurance of employment to everybody who is a GPS support employee for the 2016-17 school year.”

The support staff employees were notified of the special board meeting in a letter sent out earlier this month. In that letter, staff was notified their contract will provide a minimum of 160 days.

The plan remains simply an option at this time for the school district.

“(This) could be an option, if the board needed that option in order to maintain the financial sustainability of the district moving forward in the event of another financial crisis with the state,” Simpson said.

Simpson continued by saying, “the other option would be a mid-year reduction in force and layoffs of staff members.”

If a reduction occurred, it would not affect a staff member’s retirement if they worked a full year.

Currently, 12-month staff members are employed for 261 days, bus route drivers for 182 days and kitchen staff and school secretaries for 176 days.

The school district is in session for 175 days a year.

“You can hardly read a newspaper without seeing stories about school districts terminating people because of lack of funds. I’m glad to say we are not going to do that tonight,” Moyer said.

Following a 30 minute executive session, school board members Sharon Watts, Janna Pierson, Gail Davis, Jennifer Bennett-Johnson, Tina Smedley and Travis Sallee agreed with the recommendation, but amended the action by adding any reduction of the days would require GPS board approval.

Board member Terry Pennington was absent.

“This action will only be taken if necessary. We (board members) all share your concerns. We thank you for all you do,” Watts told the staff members before the final vote was taken.