Employee salary schedules were adopted; three staff resignations were accepted; and a proposal was approved to have additional honor graduates at Trenton High School.
These were among the actions taken last evening during a Trenton R-9 board meeting.
Adjustments with the salary schedules for certified and non certified staff are projected to cost an estimated 209 thousand dollars more for the next academic year.
Recommendations made last month by a salary committee were endorsed last evening by Superintendent Dan Wiebers and then approved by the R-9 board of education.
It adds 700 dollars to the base salary as well as at each incremental step. That makes the beginning teacher salary for Trenton R-9 at 31 thousand dollars. A 35 cent increase will be added to the non certified employee salary schedule. That makes the beginning wage ten dollars 15 cents per hour. The school board also increased substitute teacher pay to the ten-15 per hour.
Besides the raises, figures also include associated compensation for retirement, social security, medicare, and an anticipated ten percent increase in health insurance premiums. The extra duty salary schedule also was adopted.
A board policy was updated to add Labor Day as a paid holiday for non-certified employees and to add Christmas eve and New Year’s eve as paid holidays for 12 month employees of the school district.
Instructors resigning at the end of the school year are Abby Richman in first grade; Shawna Wade in fourth grade; and Crystal Mayfield in seventh grade science.
A school committee developed a new proposal on recognizing honor students within each graduating class. It was the contention of the committee that over 25 percent of the seniors often meet A-C-T college readiness benchmarks. But Trenton high school routinely for years has recognized only the “top ten” at commencement.
That means several – or in the case of this years’ class – five students would not have been recognized for successfully completing academically-challenging coursework because their grade point averages were thousandths of a point behind “number ten.”
Beginning with the class of 2016, the district plans to recognize as honor graduates those who meet four criteria: three point five cumulative grade point average; ACT composite score of 22 or higher; completion of two and a half units of weighted credit; and a 95 percent attendance rate throughout high school.
“Top ten” graduates for this year, and three successive years (2017,2018,2019) will still be recognized as such, in addition to honor graduates. Beginning with the class of 2020, which are next years’ freshmen, there will no longer be recognition of a “top ten”. THS honor grads plus Valedictorian and Salutatorian will be designated and recognized at their graduation.
A memorandum of understanding was renewed with the Grundy County Health Department to use R-9 school property as a point of distribution in the event of a public
health emergency. It also was announced the THS student council has been selected as an “honor council”.
Trenton R-9 students and staff will participate in the statewide tornado drill scheduled about 1:30 on March 15th.
