ADAMS TOWNSHIP — About 1 in 5 Clinton-Massie staffers (22 percent) do not plan to get a COVID vaccine when they become eligible for one in early February, according to a district survey.
In the anonymous survey about 45 percent of staff said they definitely will be vaccinated; and about 33 percent said they are “kind of thinking about it, on the fence a little bit,” said Clinton-Massie Superintendent Matt Baker at Monday night’s school board meeting.
The superintendent said CM has been asked to prioritize high-risk groups among district staffers so that they can be at the head of the line.
“So, that may be an age criteria, it may be someone who lives with someone who is high risk,” he said by way of examples.
About 30 percent of survey respondents said they are considered high risk themselves, or they live or care for somebody high-risk.
“So we would create some kind of strata as to who gets those vaccines first,” said Baker.
He reported the CM district is well stocked with cleaning supplies such as wipes and disinfectants for the academic year’s third quarter.
“We still have a couple of movable, mobile barriers if we need to use them, too,” Baker added.
On another virus-related matter, the State of Ohio is permitting school districts to determine that evaluations of teachers are “impractical” this school year. Baker recommended the action and the school board approved it.
There will still be informal evaluating and coaching of young teachers focusing on growth, but no summary score at the end that would be used for contract decisions, according to the superintendent.
There are multiple reasons to forgo the official evaluations this academic year, he said. The high school, for example, has been on remote learning multiple times, and has had hundreds of students in and out of quarantine for 10- to 14-day periods.
Clinton-Massie Treasurer Carrie Bir reported that she, the superintendent and Director of Innovation and Learning David Moss are talking about how to shrink the budget deficit going forward. Progress has been made this year in cutting the expenses of purchase services, she said.
“We are doing as much as we can, without trying to go too far, in order to sustain this. We’re probably going to have to look at some other ways of trying to get closer to a balanced budget here,” said the treasurer.
School Board and Finance Committee member Mike Goodall reported that at the most recent committee meeting they talked about the district’s five-year financial forecast. There was a lot of discussion around what it’s going to take to get back into the black, he said.
While there’s not necessarily any specific to-do items at this point, the feeling is that it’s pretty important to reach close to or right around break-even or the black, said Goodall.
Board member and its legislative liaison Kathleen Norman reported the proposed measure called the Fair School Funding Plan did not pass both chambers of the Ohio Legislature by the end of its legislative calendar in 2020. The Ohio House of Representative did pass the bill in a vote of 87-9, but leadership in the Ohio Senate wanted a deeper look at the financial impact of the proposed legislation, said Norman.
Also Monday, board member Jeremy Lamb was reappointed school board president, and Norman was appointed vice president.
Reach Gary Huffenberger at 937-556-5768.
