The president of the union that represents four school district clerks who have been made part-time because of budget cuts pleaded with the school board Tuesday to restore the positions to full time.
The school board made four clerks part-time after voters rejected the 2011 – 2012 school budget. The school board sent the budget back to voters after reducing their funding request by $420,000. Voters approved that budget by a slim margin June 7.
Making the clerks part-time saves the school district about $100,000 in salary and benefit costs.
The four clerks are at each of the town’s four schools.
“We hope the board will work hard to bring back the four clerks to full-time and benefits,” Claire Luce, a secretary at Quaker Farms School and president of the union that represents the clerks told the school board Tuesday.
She said the clerks will work about 19 hours per week, in the mornings, and there will be no afternoon coverage at the schools, which she believes is bad.
“Emergencies happen, you have to get a parent (on the phone),” she told the board.
School board members previously said they made the cuts to avoid teacher layoffs.
“We didn’t want to do this. Nobody wanted to do this,” school board chairwoman Rose McKinnon said Tuesday.
McKinnon told Luce during the meeting the school board is searching to see if there is a way to fund the positions. She did not elaborate.
Another school board member, Michael Macchio, said during a break in the meeting Tuesday that the board does not want to make any promises at this point because there are so many competing priorities in the school budget.
“We have to look at the total picture,” Macchio said.
The 2011 – 2012 school budget totals $25.9 million.
