Confronted with a contingent of staff members who say that weren’t given adequate opportunities to review changes, the Prescott School Board decided at its meeting Wednesday, Sept. 20 to hold off on approving employee handbook changes.
Malone Elementary early childhood teacher Melissa Miller spoke for a group of teachers during the public comment period at the board meeting. She said staff was presented with an updated handbook on Sept. 13 and had received further updates since then. The school board was scheduled to vote to approve the new handbook language at the meeting.

“We feel it did not leave us or our staff an ample amount of time,” said Miller.

She said with classes being moved between buildings, the start of the school year has been a busy time for staff.

“We’re busy teaching. We’re in the classroom. We’re moving and grooving. There is no time,” she said.

She pointed out that what was sent to staff didn’t seem like it contained all the information.

“We have some areas of concern,” she said, noting that staff was asked to sign off on a provision that items in the handbook could be changed. “We’re told they can be changed at any time. We are just respectfully asking for team collaboration moving forward.”

Superintendent Dr. Rick Spicuzza said software problems were the reason why the information presented to staff may not have looked complete. He said most of the changes have to do with aligning the handbook to board policies which are already in place.

He said there were two aspects of the handbook he wanted board approval for at the meeting. Then, principals can meet with staff to get feedback before a final board vote on the entire handbook.

Those two changes received board approval. The first was that teachers have three personal days each year with approval from the building supervisor. The previous handbook included personal days, but a sick day was also deducted on the use of the first personal day. The second change is giving custodians who have to come in on Saturdays and Sundays time-and-a-half pay.

Many times, there are weekend events at the schools, and a custodian has to be available.

“What we wanted to do is recognize it’s really hard to get our custodians in, so we wanted to be really clear that anytime they come in on a weekend, they get time and a half,” said Spicuzza.

This would mainly come up when a custodian hasn’t worked 40 hours for the week, and if they have, they would automatically be paid for the overtime.

On the rest of the handbook, board members want to see input from the staff.

Tanya Holub said administration worked collaboratively with staff negotiating a new wage table.

“I think it would be really helpful to have similar practices,” she said. “We have the opportunity with our HR (human resources) staff, maybe finance to work with our staff to have listening sessions.”

“I have the same concerns,” Vicki Rudolph said. “This school year, in part the run up to the school year, there was so much going on. I think we need to give this a little more time to be looked over.”

Said Helen Stoeckel, “We need to review the handbook with them, the complete handbook, and show them that we’re listening.”