The East Williston Board of Education unveiled a four-year contract with substitute teachers, teaching assistants and teachers aides and approved a new weighted grading systems on college transcripts for students in The Wheatley School at its Monday night meeting.
Board President Mark Kamberg said the substitute teachers, teaching assistants and teachers’ aides had accepted a wage freeze for the first two years of a four-year deal that will increase salaries by 1.1 percent over the course of the contract.
The district had already negotiated four-year contracts with district teachers, administrative and clerical employees.
The custodians are the last employee group in the district still awaiting a new contract, and East Williston Superintendent of Schools Lorna Lewis said talks are taking place with the custodians.
While expressing misgivings, board members also approved a system that will weight grades by 1.07 for all courses taken for credit.
“If the other districts are doing this, we’ve got to make it a level playing field,” said Board member David Keefe, who said he didn’t like the idea of doing it.
Board vice president Robert Freier said that school districts typically create their own systems for weighting grades and colleges and universities accept those weighted grades as valid when they make comparisons with students’ transcripts of non-weighted grades. He said including weighting grades for elective courses, not just AP or honors courses, would make Wheatley’s system equitable.
Weighted grades are given in other school districts for AP and honors classes to reflect the higher degree of difficulty in the content of those courses.
“People see Wheatley as being egalitarian. We’re essentially not changing anything, but giving students more of an opportunity,” Freier said.
Board member Robert Fallorino said he initially opposed the idea, but also endorsed the idea of creating a “level playing field to get the available merit scholarships.”
Kamberg thanked the volunteer committee that drafted a report on the practice for the board, expressed his misgivings, but acknowledged the district’s need to take action.
“I’m not sure what’s broken here, except that there’s a need to help our families get some of the money they’re entitled to,” Kamberg said in reference to Merit Scholarships.
Board member Barbara Slone said students’ grade-point averages are also considered in science competitions in which Wheatley students often compete.
One parent said she was “particularly concerned” about a potentially negative reaction from college admissions office to the altered grade point averages produced by the weighting system
Mary Harrison, director of the school district’s guidance department, told board members that phone conversations she had on Monday with representatives of several schools, including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and the University of Michigan all indicated that the new system would not adversely affect consideration for admissions or merit money.
“All the schools I spoke with say this is a fair system and it will not hurt Wheatley in any way,” Harrison said.
In response to a comment from one parent who called the 1.07 number for weighting as “arbitrary,” Wheatley School Principal Sean Feeney said that’s just the way things have evolved.
“Most of these systems are arbitrary,” Feeney said, but added that weighting grades for all classes ensured the system would benefit students equally.
A motion by Fallorino to change that number to 1.075 passed 3-2, with Kamberg and Slone opposed. But the board members voted 5-0 to adopt the practice starting next fall.
The board also accepted the recommendation of its financial advisory committee to apply $600,000 of the school district’s current surplus of $1.2 million to reduce the tax levy. The board had previously committed to applying $544,000 to reduce the levy. As much as $845,000 may be applied to help fund the reserve for the Employee Retirement System, depending on the final surplus figure as of June 30.
Alan Goldstein, head of the financial advisory committee, also suggested restoring the repair reserve fund to its 2006 level of $447,000, which would require a transfer of nearly $80,000.
The school board will take action on the financial advisory committee’s recommendations at its Aug. 10 meeting.
