Lawrence school board approves employee raises

By TONY FYFFE

BSN Editor

LOUISA — Employees of the Lawrence County School District got some good news during Monday night’s meeting of the local school board.

Board chairman Heath Preston juggled the agenda around and moved an item concerning changes to the salary schedule to the top of the meeting so employees present could see members take action on it.

“I do want to say to our teachers, unfortunately, this year, we’re not going to be able to ask for a one-percent raise,” Preston said. “We’re going to ask for a two-percent raise.”

The two-percent raise is for certified employees, but a similar increase for classified workers would not amount to much of a raise, Preston said. Instead, they will receive a 50-cent-an-hour raise, he said.

“We’ve not been able to do this for a while,” Preston said, crediting the work of Superintendent Dr. Robbie Fletcher, his staff and the school board for making the raises possible.

A motion to raise employees’ pay was unanimously approved by the board, with a motion by Maddlene Roberts and a second by Barbara Robinson.

The action on the salary schedule changes was one of the highlights of Monday’s regular meeting, which was held in the Lawrence County High School Library.

Earlier in the meeting, Fletcher updated the board on Senate Bill 128, which allows students to “re-do” the last school year. The bill creates the Supplemental School Year Program, which allows any student, regardless of academic status, to re-do the school year. It also permits students to have a fifth-year of eligibility to play sports as long as they do not turn 19 before Aug. 1 of their senior year.

Fletcher said students and their parents have until May 1 to submit a request to participate in the Supplemental School Year Program.

“At that point, at our next board meeting, we have to approve either all students do the do-over year, or no students do the do-over year under Senate Bill 128,” Fletcher told board members.

Fletcher explained how it will affect their year’s graduating class.

“This year’s seniors, if they have all their graduation requirements, they have to graduate, but they can come back and do that supplemental year for sports or they can retake some classes,” he said. “Now, if they retake classes as a graduated senior, they do not count as GPA, they do not count for a college scholarship. They just have the opportunity to retake classes if they want to.”

Students in grades nine through 11 will have to at least repeat an English class, Fletcher said.

“The reason for that is, there’s no more graduating status after next year. So, they have to be a senior in their fifth year, and the way to do that is they have to at least repeat an English class in their fifth year.”

For students in kindergarten through eighth grade, “if parents request it, we permit it,” he said.

Fletcher said that the school board must let the Kentucky Department of Education know by June 16 how it will implement the program.

Fletcher also told the board that country singer and Lawrence County native Ricky Skaggs had released information about his receiving an honorary high school diploma at last year’s LCHS virtual graduation.

“I’ve never seen a gentleman be so proud of something in my life as he was with that diploma,” Fletcher said. “He has shown that to people and talked about it, about how gracious the board and we were to allow him to have that.”

Skaggs did not graduate from high school because he lacked an English credit, Fletcher said, adding that all the country and bluegrass songs Skaggs has written over the years qualified for the missing English credit.

Fletcher also informed the board on the progress of the Grow Your Own Teacher Program.

“We want to have an educators Rising Club for students who want to be teachers, and we want to provide them opportunities to take dual-credit classes specific for teachers,” he said.

Fletcher said he would also like for those students, in their senior year, to be paid to be teachers’ aides and “possibly go in and help teach in class, possibly even doing something like an apprenticeship.”

The superintendent said only Lawrence and Warren counties are the only school districts participating in the Grow Your Own Teacher pilot program, which is a collaboration between Morehead State University and the Kentucky Department of Education.

The school board also approved May 21 as the LCHS graduation date, with May 22 as an alternate date in case of rain.

Fletcher said graduation will be an open event on the LCHS football field.