Board of Education

Deep divisions among groups of members and a feeling of overall failure permeate the 2013 self-evaluations completed earlier this year by the Board of Education members. “We are so fractured we cannot function,” one board member commented. “Plus, we are forcing the administration to spend time and money on board related in fighting (sic). My biggest failure as a board …

The school district administration will not support a requested reversal of a pay cut instituted this year for substitute teachers, schools Superintendent Edward Seto said Nov. 14. Nor will the administration support a previously promised bonus for those substitute teachers who worked more than 120 days in the 2012-2013 school year, he said. “I’m not recommending it,” he said after …

Pressured by two months of lobbying and calls to organize, the Board of Education will take another look at a pay cut that has angered the district’s substitute teachers. School board president Julia Presley said at the Oct. 17 board meeting that the board’s personnel committee will review an earlier decision to cut the teachers’ per diem pay from as …

The school district is preparing to embark on an $8.4 million project predicted to save about 30 percent of the district’s energy costs. An “Energy Savings Improvement Program” was approved by the board at its Sept. 26 meeting. Through the program, the district is predicted to see cuts in energy as well as service and parts, Josh Costell, of Tozour …

Teachers are busy getting their classrooms ready in the 12 new portable units in place throughout the school district. The portables, which have been leased for five years at a cost of about $3 million, are needed to handle overcrowding in the schools, said schools Superintendent Edward Seto. Sampson G. Smith School received its first two portables, and the Elizabeth …

The Board of Education is preparing to “market” to residents a proposed $85 million referendum which would result in a new elementary school and a realignment of elementary and middle school grade configurations. Plans are drawn for the work, which includes about $45 million for a new Pre-Kindergarten to 5th grade school on Claremont Road – designed to hold between …

A move to lower the passing grade for Franklin High School students from 67 to 60 is being studied by the Board of Education. The board at its August meeting pulled a proposed policy that would do just that, saying it needed more time to study the issue. The new policy, if adopted, would not go into effect until the …