Policy change
Hot Springs School Board approves teacher stipends
The Hot Springs School Board on Tuesday approved issuing $550 stipends for lead teachers, Family and Community Engagement coordinators, and Building Learning coordinators.
Superintendent Stephanie Nehus said the district’s former policy stipulated an individual must lead at least three other individuals in order to qualify for the $550 stipend. For each individual greater than that, they would be able to receive an additional $50.
“We have a lot of three-people teams, two-people teams where individuals are still being asked to lead, and they’re not receiving any compensation for that,” she said at the regular monthly board meeting.
“We also found that we were not compensating our Family and Community Engagement coordinators, and then we added the Building Learning coordinators just this year, and so we hadn’t had that built in.”
She noted she recently visited with the district’s Personnel Policies Committee about bringing the proposal before the board, and that it supported the changes. The new policy will give lead teachers who do not already qualify a $550 stipend, as well as FACE coordinators and BLCs.
According to the Arkansas Department of Education Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Lead Professional Educator designation “provides a career continuum that allows teachers to divide their instructional time between responsibilities to students and responsibilities for adult leadership.”
It also says that the designation was created to extend teachers’ reach to more students along with other teachers, noting, “the intent behind this designation is to encourage districts to provide the Lead Professional Educator with protected time in their workday to work with students in some capacity and spend the remaining part of their day working with
teachers. The Lead Professional Educator designation is one-way DESE is supporting statewide initiatives, such as Opportunity Culture, and seeking to ensure all students have access to excellent teachers.”
The FACE program is designed to foster partnerships between students, families, schools, and communities to reduce barriers such as academic, social, personal and health.
“And I do want to be clear that some people fill two of those roles, might even fill three of those roles — they would receive a stipend for each role that they are filling for this school year,” Nehus said.
“I will just add, in order to put this into practice this year, we will have to put this out for an official vote to all staff. Otherwise, we’d have to wait until July 1. So we’ll be pushing that out as an official vote for a policy change.”
In other business, the board approved a proposal to enter into business with Seiz Sign Co. to install up to three HSSD billboards across town for an estimated $21,000 annual cost.
Working with district communications and public relations coordinator, Adriane Barnes, Seiz will design the billboards, which will be placed on Highway 70 east near Red Roof Inn Hot Springs, and on Highway 70 west near the former Gardner STEM Magnet School campus.