– The St. Martin Parish School Board approved the hiring of three parttime cafeteria workers during its Dec. 3 meeting to help out a staffing shortage in the school system.
The issue was broached by board member Richard Potier, who suggested hiring four workers, either fulltime or part time, but said the school system needed to hire at least two parttime employees.
Potier said that quite a few of the positions are currently filled by people on worker’s compensation, and the remaining number of cafeteria workers is too low to do the job needed.
“We need to fill some of these positions,” he said. “We’ve got subs (substitutes) every day. At least if these individuals (on worker’s comp) come back, probably only about 50 percent will come back.”
District wide, not only including cafeteria workers, the school system probably has about 10 employees currently out on worker’s comp claims, Superintendent Frederick Wiltz said.
Potier said that by hiring at least two parttime employees, that would alleviate the need to hire 10 to 15 temporary workers for short stints.
“I’d say at least hire two so you don’t have to search each and every day for one,” Potier said.
Those workers could eventually be moved to fulltime employees if they show they are willing to put in the work over time, he said.
Board member Steve Fuselier also suggested the board develop a policy regarding its accumulated days off, which currently has no limit. As with the worker’s comp cases, it could lead to a lot of paid days for people who are not working, if, for example, someone who has not used 40 days of accumulated time off decides to use the entire 40 days in one year as they prepare to retire.
Board member Mark Hebert suggested making a policy limiting the number of accumulated days off that someone can have.
Hebert also suggested three so there was one available for each district — Cecilia, Breaux Bridge and St. Martinville, so each one could go to different schools in their area as needed.
Chief Financial Officer Casey Broussard agreed that hiring parttime employees would help save the school system money that it would have to invest in retirement accounts if those employees were fulltime workers.
The Finance Committee voted to hire three part-time employees who could move to whichever school needed them on that day or be used in the warehouse or other Nutrition Department jobs. The full board later approved the recommendation of the committee to hire the three employees.
Other business
The board recognized Pam Jordan, Director of Federal Programs for the school system, as the Southern Scripts Employee of the Month.
The board also approved an exchange of property with Mr. and Mrs. Joe White, who own property to each side of a school bus turnaround near Stephensville Elementary School.
The couple owns three lots, two of them to the left of the school board turnaround and one to the right of the turnaround. The three lots owned by the couple are bulkheaded to prevent flooding and topsoil erosion, while the school bus turnaround property is not bulkheaded so the dirt on the school property washes out in heavy rains.
Workers
The two proposed sliding the school bus turnaround to the end of the four connected properties so the three properties owned by the couple are connected. They would then put bulkheads on the unprotected property, and the school bus turnaround would be moved to a location that already has bulkheads.
The board voted to approve the property swap.
The consent agenda approved by the board included a contract with a consultant hired for 15 hours or less per month for the remainder of the year to provide visually impaired instruction services.
The board also approved updates to its Seclusion and Restraint policy to meet the stipulations set forth in state Act 479.
The changes were a reduction of the time constraint which designate a hold as a restraint from 5 minutes to 3 minutes. Observation time also was reduced to 3 minutes while restraint/seclusion was in progress. The policy is in place to deal with students who are an imminent risk of harm to themselves or others.
The board also approved a Memorandum of Understanding with Outreach, a software platform purchased by the state to assist with monitoring threats and assessing risk. The MOU provides for data sharing with the software platform.
