The Haines Borough school board Tuesday voted unanimously to restore principal Cheryl Stickler’s salary to the same amount she received last year, in light of time she has spent doing her former duties.
Under a restructuring of administration adopted at the start of the school year, Stickler was to spend half her time as principal and the other half overseeing the district’s homeschool program. For the workload reduction from full-time principal, she took a cut of $17,594 in pay and benefits.
But that arrangement wasn’t working, Anne Marie Palmieri said after Tuesday’s meeting. Besides mentoring Rene Martin, the district’s new dean of students, Stickler has been spending much of her time figuring out a required change in the district’s methodology for reviewing teacher performance, Palmieri said.
Having Stickler spend half her time on the homeschool program “just didn’t work out,” Palmieri said, while adding that it’s still the board’s intent to dedicate a half-time position to improving the district’s homeschool program.
Martin, who formerly served as the district’s high school English teacher, hasn’t yet been certified for evaluating teachers, but it appears she’ll achieve that before the next school year, Palmieri said. Martin currently holds principal duties for grades 6-12, including student discipline and chaperoning after-school events. Stickler serves as K-5 principal.
Palmieri said the configuration for the school administration next year hasn’t yet been sorted out, and will be determined after district budgeting and in consultation with superintendent Ginger Jewell, who was hired in May.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the school board appointed student representative Christine Briggs as liaison to the Friends of Mosquito Lake School and Community Center, a citizen group that’s developing a plan to keep the school open.
Group coordinator Dana Hallett told the board his group’s effort to recruit 10 students for the school is “not finished yet.” He suggested a meeting of a larger community work group to address the issue “assuming we have a shared goal of keeping Mosquito Lake open as a school.”
Superintendent Jewell previously said she’d like to have an assured enrollment of 10 students by Feb. 1 for reopening the school, which was closed in May. Hallett assured the board his group wouldn’t “drag out” a decision. “An earlier decision is better. We’re sensitive to that.”
Jewell reported the state Department of Education might require all students attending Mosquito Lake to come from the upper highway community, as the state was sensitive to districts “salting the deck” with temporary students in order to reach enrollment requirements for school funding.
Hallett and some board members, however, questioned if the state could require Mosquito Lake students come from a certain perimeter around the school.
“We don’t have attendance boundaries here in this district,” Hallett said. “Board policy says it’s the school board’s responsibility to set attendance boundaries but so far the board has had the wisdom not to do that,” Hallett said.
Board member Sara Chapell noted that Klukwan School, which is part of the Chatham School District, draws students from the town of Haines.
Jewell also said the education department would consider the reopening of the school as a “new school” for regulatory purposes.
An annual joint meeting of the school board and Haines Borough Assembly is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the school.