Dozens of additional Kenai Peninsula Borough School District employees will be offered contracts for next school year. That’s following school board approval during a special meeting Wednesday.
The board approved two groups of contracts. The first was for nontenured teachers. The second was for teachers who will achieve tenure once the next school year begins. A teacher achieves tenure once they’ve finished three years of teaching.
The board approved tenured contracts last month.
Zen Kelly is the board’s president and finance committee chair. He said the district no longer has a safety net in savings to catch the district if it issues contracts it later learns it can’t afford. That’s why the board only improved some nontenured contracts.
“This plan involved looking at our different budget scenarios and being able to say, ‘What is the bare minimum that we’re going to expect? What is the absolute bare minimum?’” he said.
Once an employee gets a contract, they have 30 days to make a decision. They’ll either accept the contract and pledge to come back next school year. Or, they can reject the contract and tell the district they won’t be coming back. Either way, Kelly says it will help give the district a better idea of how many employees it will have going into the next year.
Board members like Jason Tauriainen said they’re excited to move forward.
“I’m thankful that we can get these out, and the more the better,” he said. “So as soon as we can get more out, the budget that we have in there does allow for us to do that.”
But others, like board member Virginia Morgan recognized the decision still leaves some employees in limbo.
“Though I am pleased to see all of these contracts on the agenda tonight, I do feel deeply for those who are not on tonight's agenda,” she said.
The district also still hasn’t sent out offer letters to non-certified employees – think custodians, secretaries and cafeteria workers. Kelly, the board president, said he plans to send out remaining contracts when it is “fiscally responsible to do so.”
The vote to issue contracts came after board approval of the school district’s budget for the upcoming year. Members heard emotional testimony from parents and teachers at Sterling Elementary School, which would be closed under the adopted budget.
Krystal Duval is a tenured kindergarten teacher at Sterling Elementary. She got her contract earlier this year and says that led her to believe her school was safe. Now, she says the district needs to be upfront about what a contract actually means for an employee whose school could close.
“I want you to give these contracts,” she said. “But if you're going to cut my school, where are you going to put me, and when are you going to tell me where you're going to put me? Because I need time, because I've got 12 years in that classroom, and I've got to move it somewhere.”
The school district’s budget is now before the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly, which will vote on school funding next month.
