Anthony Cloud

Staff Writer

Rotating teacher positions were approved by the Bell County School Board on Monday. This will be a full-time certified position. The salary for the position will be $15,170. The rotating teacher would cover for a teacher if one was to be absent.

This position would be taken on a one-year basis.

“With this number of personnel, you are always going to have at least four people in a district out,” said Superintendent Yvonne Gilliam. “The good thing about this is … it’s not going to cost that much. We pay that much in substitute cost.”

According to Gilliam, this allows the rotating teacher to continue with teacher retirement.

“We have some teachers laid off that we could hire back. If they don’t get a job somewhere else, this gives them a chance to continue into retirement,” said Gilliam.

Gilliam said the district has one tenured person without a job currently because of the loss of the JAGS grant. That person may be used as an in-school suspension teacher.

Gilliam said she would like to place one of these teachers at the high school and at each of the three large elementary schools. The larger elementary schools would be coupled with one of the smaller schools in the district: Bell Central will be paired with Lone Jack, Yellow Creek with Frakes and Page with Right Fork.

The board also approved to allow schools to hire a math tutor on an as needed basis upon the schools request. The individual hired must have a degree.

The position would be a full-time Gear Up position. This would be a 185 day position at $82 a day. The total cost would be $15,170. The individual schools would be the entity that would be hiring the tutors.

“This would be another place that some of these people that didn’t get hired back could go into,” said Gilliam.

This Elgin contract was also discussed during the meeting. The foundation mailed a new contract to Gilliam a few hours before the meeting.

Gilliam said Elgin and the district are in the process of phasing Elgin out. This would make it the districts sole responsibility for the continuation of the Elgin reading program.

The district is in the third year of the with Elgin. Much of the contract revolves around the use of the reading specialist, which is hired for 210 days. He would be at the same level and providing the same services as the math specialist.

He would be out of the school district for 42 days, but no more than 20 of those days will be while school is in session. Elgin has agreed to pay half of the salary, which would equal $30,750. The board approved the contract.

Coverage of the Bell County School Board will continue in Wednesday’s edition of the Daily News.

Anthony Cloud is a staff writer for the Middlesboro Daily News. He can be contacted via email at acloud@heartlandpublications.com.