Teachers & Board Dispute Policies
By Jessica Wald
The ongoing dispute about two policies put into place just days before the school year began, were again discussed at the regular meeting of the Napoleon Public School Board on Monday, November 10. All school board members were in attendance including President Taylor Grunefelder, Corey Schumacher, Derrick Leier, Tori Gross and via phone conference, Shawn Puklich, along with administrators, Superintendent Rich Bjerklie, Elem. Principal Whitney Weigel and HS Principal/AD Chad Berger.
Bjerklie stated the board and teachers were discussing the personal electronic communication devices policy, which prohibits personal electronics during instructional time, but also how the policy stated if staff members weren’t found in compliance with the policy or if they weren’t enforcing the rules, the consequence could include termination.
After discussion on the policy’s wording which includes “up to termination”, board members decided to leave the wording as is. Leier and Schumacher commented how the policy doesn’t give a defining number of “strikes” against the policy that it would take to be terminated and the word termination may be excessive, but members also agreed if staff would be knowingly letting students break the policy, then there should be consequences, which may or may not include termination. Puklich suggested it will be a case-by-case basis, just like in any job he said, this can include termination. Other board members also stated they didn’t have a problem with the wording before deciding the policy will stay as stated.
The board said another policy in question with the teachers included changing the teachers’ school day start time to 8:00 a.m. instead of 8:15 a.m. A couple months ago teachers voiced their concerns how the time was changed in the policy after they signed their contracts and only two days before school began for the year. The board said they sent questions on the policy to their lawyers before getting back to the teachers recently.
President Grunefelder suggested. . .