The first District 118 Board meeting of the new school year showed some challenges the district is having thus far; such as some schools being low on counselors, or a shortage of science teachers at Danville High School. But another one that came up was the difficulty in hiring more district psychologists. Usually, 118 has seven. Right now they have three. An MOU, memorandum of understanding, was presented to the board by the Danville Education Association and Special Education Department on how to go about hiring the new psychologists. But Superintendent Dr. Alicia Geddis did not sign off on it, saying the issue of how much the psychologists would be paid for work after contractual hours caused some resentment among other district and special education employees that also do work after contractual hours. Dr. Geddis told us afterwards that she simply had to ask, “please try again.”
AUDIO: My challenge was for Mr. Rivers and the Special Ed department to go back to the drawing board, and maybe the entire district go back to the drawing board; and come up with something that was more reflective, and fairly compensated everyone for the work that’s being done.
The Mr. Rivers Geddis mentioned is DEA president Alan Rivers. He had no comment after Wednesday’s board meeting. Geddis hopes to have a new MOU to be considered at the September 7th Board meeting.
Another very touchy issue right now is the school buses. The district is down about seven drivers right now, with some currently being trained, and that alone has contributed to students being picked up and dropped off late. But another issue is that due to personnel shortages, the First Student school bus company is now outsourcing its route planning to a company in Montana. And due to some miscommunication concerning a couple mapping systems, there have been situations where students are being dropped off at what’s considered dangerous corners, or worse, having to cross the street, even a busy one like Main Street. Dr. Geddis was very adamant during and after the meeting that common sense needs to be used. Especially when it comes to following a very important district rule about busing students.
AUDIO: In District 118 we will only have same side of the street pick ups. There should be no exceptions to that rule, that established when I came here in 2015. Same side of the street pick ups.
Board member Johnnie Carey, speaking as a grandparent of a District 118 Pre-K child, reminded the First Student spokesperson to make sure all drivers are checking the IDs of the adults who pick up the children.
