A committee of certified personnel at the Pulaski County Special School District will again weigh whether to ask the School Board for a standardized workday for teachers.
The Certified Personnel Policy Committee brought the proposed change in procedure to the district's School Board on Tuesday, but the seven-member panel took no action on it. Administrators decide on changes in procedure, while the board takes up changes in policy, said board Chairman Linda Remele.
The proposal would place teachers at the district's 24 schools on the same seven-hour and 40-minute day. Currently, teachers at different schools work staggered hours to help with the district's busing schedules.
Pam Fitzgiven, the committee chairman, said the driving force behind the change is that some state laws refer to an "hourly rate of pay" for teachers.
As an example, she said, the district doesn't allow teachers to get credit for professional development if they are on the clock, but teachers currently don't have a definite "end time." If teachers lose their planning period, they would get paid an hourly rate of pay for that, she said, but because there is no set workday, there is no way to determine that rate.
"You don't know what your hourly rate of pay is unless you know what your workday is, what your hours are," she said.
Fitzgiven will take the matter back to the certified personnel policy committee, and the group will then decide whether to reintroduce it to the board as a policy change. A procedure would need approval from Superintendent Jerry Guess, who said he didn't think the change was necessary.
"Our argument is the day is whatever is necessary to make the day work,"said Guess, who is an administrative member of the committee. "If you need to stay or if you need to get there early, feel free to do that. But we don't feel it's necessary to define the day with any particular length for any purpose."
The school district had years ago set a seven-hour and 40-minute workday. When the state took over the district in 2011, administrators still followed the workday, but slowly it started becoming dismantled, she said, adding that there are now inconsistencies.
Other school districts, including those in North Little Rock and Cabot, have set policies on teacher workdays, she said.
What makes the Pulaski County Special district unique is that many of the 16 elementary schools start at different times, said Janice Warren, assistant superintendent for equity and pupil services.
"Other school districts in the state of Arkansas are able to say our workdays are from 8 to 3:30 because everybody goes to school from K through 12 at the same time," Warren said. "We're not privileged to have that here. Because of our transportation, our schools all start at a different time and end at a different time."
The school district provides transportation for students to and from magnet schools and specialty programs in the Little Rock and North Little Rock School districts and to and from special-program schools outside of students' regular attendance zones. The district currently operates 158 buses and runs 264 bus routes, said Charles Blake, the director of transportation.
The district is ending intradistrict busing for the 2017-18 school year as it prepares to lose $20.8 million in state desegregation aid, ending at the end of that academic year.
"All of that will make our transportation situation greatly simplified, and our ability to control the day with more reasonable similarity will be easier," Guess said. "Our goal is to narrow those starting times in the district feeding patterns. We hope to start Mills next year like we do the other three high schools, so those are changes that are coming."
Metro on 03/15/2017