New restrooms to be installed at Park Elementary

Steel Valley School District will install two restrooms in the annex at Park Elementary School so that special needs children and adults can use a washroom without going upstairs.

At the school board’s workshop meeting Monday, director of facilities Dennis Keesecker said the restrooms won’t be installed in time for the start of school, but will probably be done in October or November.

Earlier this year, a 10year-old girl with pulmonary hypertension and chronic lung disease was using the teachers’ restroom on the first floor of Park Elementary because she had difficulty climbing stairs to get to a restroom on an upper floor. The Steel Valley teachers’ union filed a grievance objecting to her using the teachers’ restroom.

The union dropped the grievance after superintendent Ed Wehrer and the school board denied it in separate actions.

In June, the school board hired architect John Kudravy to analyze whether district restrooms meet requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Mr. Keesecker said Mr. Kudravy walked through district buildings with him in mid-June. He expects Mr. Kudravy to have recommendations by early August on how to ensure that all district buildings are handicapped accessible.

During the meeting, Donna Dreshman objected to a proposal she said was mentioned at the July 15 special meeting to increase Mr. Wehrer’s salary from $101,000 to $120,000.

A district source said Mr. Wehrer requested a salary increase from $101,000 to $127,000 to be retroactive in his current contract, which started about a month ago. School directors unanimously tabled a motion on his salary increase request at the July 15 meeting.

At Monday’s meeting, Ms. Dreshman asked how the school board can justify an increase in salary of 20 percent. She suggested school directors tell senior citizens — who she said may have to choose between paying for their medication or paying property taxes — about the proposal.

Mr. Wehrer, who was not at the meeting Monday, could not be reached for comment about the salary proposal.

Also, during the meeting, several school directors, including board President Donna Kiefer, objected to a proposal to hire a firm from another state to contact substitute teachers, aides and custodians.

Substitute teachers in the district are paid $90 per day for the first 30 days of service, and $120 per day for each additional day.

Mrs. Kiefer said the fee paid for substitute teachers through Precision Education would be a 35 percent increase over what the district pays substitutes now, and that substitute custodians, cafeteria workers and school nurses would earn 40 percent more than substitutes in those fields earn now.

“If we’re going to do this, why don’t we raise the rate and hire people, our own people?” she asked district business manager John Zenone.

Mr. Zenone said the district would save money with Precision Education in instances in which teachers substitute for other teachers during their planning periods. They also have a bigger pool of substitutes to choose from, a district official said.

Mrs. Kiefer said she thinks the district is trying to contract out cafeteria and custodial services so administrators can get rid of district custodians and cafeteria workers.

Steel Valley Education Association president Shawn McCallister said teachers have not approved using the company. In other business: • The district is draining the high school swimming pool after a child using the pool in a summer program defecated in the pool. The job will cost the district about $5,000.

Mr. Keesecker said district employees shocked the pool more than once in an effort to kill bacteria, but the levels of e coli bacteria in the pool are still too high.

“We were told we should just drain the pool, sanitize it [and] clean the lines out,” he said after the meeting.

• Mrs. Kiefer said she and others in the district are gathering information about restarting Steel Valley’s adult education program.

• School board members also removed a proposal to delete Policy 004.1, which provides for a student representative to advise the school board, from this month’s voting meeting agenda.

Director Thomas Olson and other school board members said the policy needs to be updated, not eliminated.