The Board of Education will wait until next month before deciding if it should reactivate cell phone service for some district employees.
After a brief discussion during a special meeting Wednesday, the Board of Education tabled acting on a proposal by Superintendent of Schools Stephen Tracy to restore some of the 36 cell phones the district owns so they could be used by custodial staff management, including building principals, the business manager and the special education director.
In an effort to save money under tight financial circumstances, the school board cut $10,800 from the 2009 – 2010 budget that would have been used for service on 10 Blackberry phones and 26 other cell phones.
Tracy would like to restore service to seven of the Blackberries and 10 of the regular cell phones the district already owns so that some staff members can be reached in case of emergency or other times to handle matters throughout the district.
The scaled-back plan would cost less than $4,000, Tracy said.
“I wanted board to think about the difficulties when people are not reachable,” Tracy said, adding that in the district’s custodial contract, the district has to make a “reasonable effort” to provide phones to custodial staff.
Board members preferred to wait until the September meeting to revisit the matter after they heard from the board’s attorney and to deliberate whether it would be worthwhile bringing the services back.
“It will be up to the board,” Tracy said. “I know some people feel strongly (that we should wait) until we restore other services. Everyone is under a lot of pressure and it’s an underfunded system.”
