School board approves contract for psychology services, consider principal salary schedule

The Wrangell School Board met last Monday evening, April 20, via web conference. The first item on the agenda was a temporary suspension of the policy requiring that the school board hold in-person meetings. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is safer to hold all meetings via phone or web conference.

With this out of the way, the board got down to the business of accepting a contract for school psychology services. The contract is with SERRC, the Southeast Regional Resource Center. This contract is actually for the current financial year, FY 2020, but School Board President Aaron Angerman explained that the contract was recently altered.

"The contract has been amended to add one on-site day and one office day," he said.

The total amount of the amended contract comes out to $14,515.50, with a total of seven on-site days and five office days. After some discussion, this amended contract was approved.

The school board also briefly considered changes to the salary schedule for school principals during the meeting. The original salary schedule was set in five "steps" for both the elementary and secondary school principals. Angerman said that the district was proposing removing the bottom two "steps" of the pay scale to increase the starting wages for the principal positions. However, board member Gilbert proposed putting it off until next year's budget cycle.

"I would prefer that we wait until after negotiations where we would have a better grasp of the personnel costs that the district may incur," Gilbert said. "We don't have principals for next year that would apply to this salary schedule. I would prefer that we waited until next year to approve a salary schedule for principals."

The board agreed with Gilbert, after some discussion. The motion was voted down.

During the meeting, the school board also approved of the FY 2021 Alaska Migrant Education Literacy Grant application, accepted a DonorsChoose grant award, and discussed plans for upcoming school events like prom, senior awards night, and graduation.