Board ready to go forward in Helms probe Teachers to receive pay increase in new 3-year contract
By BECKY BROOKS
Enterprise Editor
clydenews@bizwoh.rr.com
As students were preparing for the start of the school year today, members or the Clyde-Green Springs Exempted Village Board of Education were setting up the due process required if they determine they need to remove the local school superintendent permanently from their employ.
Action taken Monday night by the school board would allow the members to terminate the superintendent if evidence of criminal action is found in the current investigation being conducted by Clyde Police and the Ohio Auditor of State's office.
Acting Superintendent Greg Elchert said the board could fire Helms even before the police and auditor complete their investigation.
The Clyde-Green Springs Exempted Village Board of Education met at 7 p.m. Monday in the city council chambers. In the audience again for that second month was Clyde Police Chief Bruce Gower and this time also the district attorney Michael J. Loughlin.
Within minutes of starting the regular monthly meeting, the board voted to go into executive session to discuss personnel and disciplinary action of personnel. Both Gower and Loughlin went into executive session with the board.
Ninety minutes later the board returned to the council chambers and began the meeting.
Later the members unanimously passed a resolution authorizing the board president, Tom Conley, and vice president, Todd Warner, to send a "Loudermill" letter to Superintendent Todd Helms should the investigation into irregular requisitions and purchases of equipment and supplies determine there is "wrong doing".
"You have to do that for any public employee if you consider removing him," acting superintendent Greg Elchert explained after the meeting ending.
The resolution also authorized the two school board officers to conduct a hearing with Helms after he sending him the required letter. Helms would be permitted to testify at the civil hearing and then the two board officers would determine if Helms' employment should be terminated.
Their findings would then have to be reported back to the full board at a public meeting. The full board of education would then vote to support or not to support the board officer's recommendation.
Elchert said if a due process hearing is held for Helms or any public employee, it would not be public. An employee also has the right to choose not to testify, he said.
Elchert also would not say if or how soon a Loudermill letter would be sent or hearing held.
On Monday night, the school board meeting ran nearly two-hours as board members also approved a new contract for the teachers union. The teachers' contract expired June 30, 2007.
While the board members were absent in executive session Monday night, Clyde-Green Springs Education Association union representative Doug McCauley discussed the contract his union members had approved earlier on Monday.
Teachers voted 127 in favor to 7 against the three-year agreement, which is retroactive to July 1, 2008.
While the CGSEA members saw an annual pay increase over the fire two years of the contract, they agreed to pay a larger share of their insurance premiums, McCauley said.
Under the agreement, teachers will receive a 3-percent raise this year and a 2.85-percent increase in year two of the contract. In year three, the union can reopen negotiations with the school board concerning wages.
"We gave on insurance," McCauley said. "If the board pays less, you pay more," he said about the costs.
"The supplemental base increased," he added about a pay increase for coaching, club advisors and extra duty contracts.
The board also approved a nearly identical salary increase for its supervisors, non-union clerical staff and administrators - not including the superintendent, they pointed out.
Also on Monday night, former school board member Joe Wilson spoke to the board and gave them some good news and a donation.
"I'm here representing myself, my sister-in-law and my sister," he explained. Wilson, his sister, Nancy Ehrman, and Virginia Wilson sold 30 acres earlier this year to the board of education on Limerick Road as a location for the proposed new middle school. That school project is part of the Ohio School Facilities Commission plan for the district.
Wilson commented that with the City of Clyde also purchased the adjacent 22 acres, which will make the location perfect for a recreation center in the future next to the new middle school and its facilities.
"I would like to make a presentation on behalf of my sister-in-law, Virginia Wilson; my sister, Nancy Ehrman and myself of $60,000," he told the board Monday night.
Also in other business, Elchert called for a school board work session at 5 p.m. Monday, Sept. 8 at the Clyde High School media center (library).
"We will have all the architects," he said about the purpose of the meeting. The board members will be updated on the blue prints of the four buildings to be constructed or renovated in the OSFC project.
Elchert commented the meeting at minimum would last well over an hour.
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