Trego's Mountain Ear

Tuesday’s board meeting began with the rumblings of thunder, which was pretty appropriate. The meeting began with public comment and immediately became heated. It covered hiring policies, touched on old minutes, went into depth about laws governing school board members, and concluded with further details on things that hadn’t been done in properly during the school year. The meeting lasted for more than three hours.

The first comment was by a disgruntled employee, who essentially accused the board of following improper procedures for a contract nonrenewal. While this is something the school board would normally need to discuss in executive session to preserve privacy, an employee has the option to wave that. There were a few interesting points brought up. One was with respect to school authority. In schools without administration, such as Trego, things can get a bit interesting. The employee began with the premise that, since the county superintendent is effectively the administrator for every school in the county that lacks one, the county superintendent of schools should be responsible for performance reviews. The County Superintendent, Suzy Rios was actually present, and was able to clarify that rural schools are somewhat unique. The County Superintendent is confined by law to providing performance reviews for the teachers, not for any other type of employee. She was also able to clarify that the board had been acting in accordance with state law. Another interesting point was made with regards to what a living wage is for the area. As it happens, there’s an online calculator for this. According to it, a single individual without spouse or child, requires around $19 an hour to be making a living wage.

The next public comment was an accusation that two board members had acted inappropriately to give a teacher a raise that was not voted on by the entire board. The board clarified that the board had voted to offer a contract at the previous meeting, and that the salary was determined by the school’s salary matrix. This is fairly standard procedure and Trego School’s matrix was approved a few years ago. Pay is typically determined by a combination of education, years of experience, and licensure. Additional credit hours can result in substantial pay increases. Later in the meeting, the board voted to adopt a salary matrix for classified staff (Eureka’s).

After, the meeting turned to items more formally listed on the agenda. The teachers expressed the desire to do something nice for a guest artist who’d volunteered to work with the kids. Before the board could really begin to consider it, Mark Spehar moved to table it, explaining that he would handle it via a donation. This neatly prevented any need to worry about ethics around spending public funds, and kept the meeting moving smoothly.

Later, the board discussed minutes from August of 2019. The board reversed the 2019 decision that no board member should have keys to the school and designated member Mark Spehar to have a key. It maintained the policy of requiring that paper shredding be approved by the board.

There was a formal discussion of a letter sent to the board- with an explanation from the board that every letter received that way is a matter of public record and should be addressed. The board addressed the letter by paragraph, with some aspects that were quite vague in order to maintain confidentiality as required by law.

Things picked up again, with board chair Nancy Wilkins remarking that while the meeting had already been hard, this next bit would be harder. The board read a formal opinion, received by an attorney from the school board association, about board members acting as volunteers.

“The service as a volunteer must be informal and infrequent to avoid the impression the volunteer service is regularly occurring in a manner that establishes a reliance on the trustee’s service as a volunteer.”

Former board chair, Clara Mae Crawford immediately responded to this. Clara Mae is, of the present board, the most actively involved in the school. Despite this, she’s certainly not the only board member who has been volunteering. School board members have volunteered in many ways: Helping with trash pickup day, arranging the school picnic, teaching the occasional elective class, even having a day a week that a board member would be present at the school.

It had evidently not been clear to the board (and certainly wasn’t clear to me when I ran for school board), that the choice to be on the school board must also be a choice not to volunteer at the school. Clara Mae very succinctly said “I will take the kids over the board. I have more desire to help the kids.”

Following that, there was a discussion of various policies that had been broken, and a bit of debate about what had happened when, if at all.

The meeting concluded with a discussion of the position of district clerk. Superintendent Suzy Rios stated that “District clerk is the hardest job” and “OPI doesn’t care if you’re having a bad day.” The board ultimately determined that due to a massive payroll error, they’d be very limited in what they could do until the error can be corrected. It’s evidently rather severe, since board chair Nancy Wilkins remarked about the need to determine if the school has funds to hire an attorney. When someone asked about the board association attorney, Superintendent Suzy Rios clarified “That’s who told them they’d need to pay for one.” Which ended the discussion.

By the time the meeting adjourned, the rain had let up and the skies were clear.