6/24/09

Suburban News

Khalila Perrin

Come August, Columbus City School students will get a little more time to sharpen their skills and so will district staff.

If the Ohio Department of Education approves the district adminstration’s request, three school days in the 2009-10 school year will be converted into three in-service days for staff professional development.

Those three days plus Capital Day will give staff four development days in all for the upcoming school year.

Superintendent Gene Harris said carving out time from the newly lengthened school day for professional development ties into the district’s goal of academic achievement.

“Our professional development is important for all of our staff, and it ties to our bottom line,” she told Columbus Board of Education members June 16.

Based on a levy campaign promise the administration announced last year, officials agreed to use the newly approved tax dollars to add a period back into the school day across all grade levels.

Even taking into account the proposed in-service days, classroom time will still be increased by 73 hours at the high school level and by 27.5 hours at the middle and elementary school levels over the course of the school year, Harris said.

“The time that our children will spend in their classroom … still exceeds, even with the waiver days, the state department’s minimum requirement for our students,” she added.

The new schedule rolls out with the start of the school year this fall — Aug. 26.

The ODE still must approve the waiver days but Harris seemed hopeful.

“We’ve been in direct contact with the Ohio Department of Education and they support this plan,” Harris said.

Hiring teachers to accommodate the beefed-up school day is the next order of business, officials have said.

“We are hiring approximately 200 new teachers,” said district spokeswoman Kim Norris. “We are ahead of our projections in terms of the hiring. We have been concentrating on (hiring) math, science, foreign language, special education and social studies teachers.”

The district loses about 100 teachers to attrition each year.

Internal auditor search

In other news, the board approved Diversity Group LLC as the search firm that will manage a national search for candidates for the district’s internal auditor position.

The contract with Diversity is not to exceed 25 percent of the new auditor’s salary, according to the agreement.

Former Internal Audit Manager Tom Clark has been serving as interim internal auditor since April 4.

Clark’s appointment came on the heels of the April 3 resignation of Harold Saunders. Saunders had served as the district’s internal auditor since August 2007.

Clark, a Delaware County resident, earns an annual salary of $98,800 — as did Saunders.

The internal auditor, treasurer and superintendent positions are the only district employees who are hired and work directly for the Board of Education. The rest of the district’s employees work for one of those three.

“Our professional development is important for all of our staff and it ties to our bottom line.”

–Gene Harris