(Griswold) The Griswold School Board approved their Continuous Learning Plan and a new Pandemic Pay Resolution at their meeting Monday.
Schools were given three options for continuous learning during the COVID-19 shutdown; No Continuous Learning, Voluntary Educational Enrichment Opportunities, or Required Educational Services.
Griswold Superintendent Dave Henrichs said they chose the option to provide voluntary learning opportunities for students.
“The biggest piece there is that schools or teachers have to make sure that they make a very valid attempt to engage kids. At Griswold, what that would like for us is we would contact kids multiple times per week either using tools such as Google Hangout, or Zoom, personal letters, for families that may not have access to the internet we would provide some educational packets to kids either hand delivered, by mail or they can be picked up,” explained Henrichs.
With that Voluntary Educational Enrichment option schools do not have to make up any time that is missed between April 13th and when school starts again. These learning opportunities are not mandatory and any credit for the work done during that time frame does not help or hurt the students in terms of their grade. Henrichs said they are in the process of communicating the plan with teachers, students and parents so they can provide those learning opportunities for the kids.
The Griswold School Board also approved an extension of their Pandemic Pay Resolution. Henrichs said they will continue to pay all of their people under contract from April 13th until either they go back to school or until the end of the school year. Henrichs said that would even include summer coaches if they’re not allowed to have those activities.
“The reason behind that is, technically we’re going to receive that money anyway for our staff, and we’re trying to what’s best for our staff. One option they could do is apply for unemployment, but in those cases they’re only going to get 60-some percent of their normal pay and that would put some of staff members in a tremendous hardship. Our Board definitely cares about employees, so we’re going to pay them throughout extent of this closure,” said Henrichs.
And, as we previously reported, the Board approved the hiring of Billy Hiatt as the new 6-12 Principal.
