School board, officials hear from system staff

Teacher coverage, cultural sensitivity, diversity among topics discussed

Secretarial staffing, hiring and pay for cafeteria workers, cultural sensitivity and filling in for absent teachers were among the topics raised by Charles County Public Schools support staff during the first “town hall” roundtable discussion this school year.

Staff members met with the school board and school system officials in the staff development room of the Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building Monday afternoon to air grievances and make recommendations. A town hall roundtable with teachers is scheduled for Monday at 4:30 p.m. in the board room.

The last time the board held a town hall roundtable with support staff was a year ago.

Charla Hillyard, food program support services specialist, said her department is having a difficult time hiring and retaining employees.

“We have a hard time keeping employees, because it’s not an eight-hour position, unless you’re a manager,” Hillyard said. “I’m not going to downplay it, it’s a lot of hard work.”

Hillyard said new state requirements in training for food service managers have made the job more difficult, but the pay has stayed the same.

“We don’t mind, because I like to seek knowledge, it makes my job easier, but there’s no incentive when all of this is required,” Hillyard said.

Tammy Latour, secretary

at Mattawoman Middle School, said having previously worked in an elementary school, the number of secretaries in elementary schools is too low for the amount of work they do.

“A lot of the elementa- ry schools only have the one secretar y in the front office, and it’s a lot, a lot, a lot of work for one per- son,” Latour said. “You feel you can’t even take a day off if you need to, because who’s going to be there to do the work? Who’s going to be there to help the parents, the staff?”

Central office secretary Sandra Donahue suggested the school system might look at having high school students work at elementary schools per- forming non-confidential tasks.

“It’s something we’ve discussed with the Career Resource and Development program, the CRD program,” said Superintendent Kimber- ly Hill. “It’s something we’ve tried to see if there are high school students who want to be employed at elementary schools, but it hasn’t moved fur- ther than discussion yet, but that’s a good idea.”

Pernevlyn Coggins, technology facilitator at Berry Elementary School, said more needs to be done to increase diversity among teachers and staff, and to encourage cultural sensitivity. She said she learned last week from students that a white teacher at the school had been referring to her predomi- nantly African American students by a culturally insensitive term.

“I don’t think that she did it maliciously, but that’s part of the problem,” Coggins said. “If you don’t have diversity, if you don’t have cultural sensitivity, this is what the result is.”

Hill said the school system has revamped its hir- ing practices to include more historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.

“We are above the na- tional average when it comes to the percentage of minority teachers that we have. It is a major goal of this board and this school system to have its staff be representative of our county, and right now it’s not, and we’re very, very aware of that,” Hill said. “This is a priority for us.”

Board member Virginia McGraw urged Coggins to speak with her school’s principal about the cultur- al sensitivity issue.

Janet Ryan, media instructional assistant at Arthur Middleton El- ementary School, said she works in the library because she loves it, but finds herself in the li- brar y less and less as she is pulled out to substitute for absent teachers.

“In one week, four days, I was pulled to do each grade level, so I was not in the library for those four days,” Ryan said, adding that during that time, her work didn’t get done. “I’m 55 years old, and I want to be in the li- brary; I don’t want to be a sub.”

Deputy Superintendent Amy Hollstein said the school system is looking at the data to find a way to solve the problem.

“We’re looking to see if it may be fiscally possible to have permanent subs for schools in the future,” Hollstein said. “We have to have adults in the classroom without having all of you being pulled all the time.”

Carpenter/locksmith John Groat, president of the American Federa- tion of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 2981, said staff members are being asked to do more with less.

“A lot of these concerns and gripes come down to people being asked to do more and more because of budget constraints,” Groat said. “We’re in des- perate need of a COLA [Cost Of Living Adjust- ment]; I can’t stress that enough.”

Board chairman Michael Lukas said he could not remember a time when the school system’s budget request had been fully funded by the county. Lukas said the board would get responses to people’s concerns within two weeks.

Hill thanked staff members for sharing their concerns with the school system.

“I think that one of the best things about working in Charles County Public Schools is that we are small enough to be able to have conversations like this, yet large enough to really be able to get things done.”