As many South Orange-Maplewood community members expressed concern for contracted employees in the school district facing unemployment during the implementation of distance learning, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ronald Taylor addressed the situation at the top of the March 16, 2020 South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education meeting.
Taylor assured the community that paraprofessionals and other contracted employees would be paid.
“There’s been a concern that’s been brought to our attention — both the Board and myself and others in the administration — around contracted employees — some of our employees that are provided to us by vendors,” said Taylor.
“We have several employees who are instrumental in delivering high level instruction and safety to our children. They are our paraprofessionals, both one on one and in classroom settings, also our transportation members as well as our custodians and our security guards. They are all contracted vendors. I would like to praise our Board for giving us the go ahead to work with those vendors to ensure that we are able to continue to employ these very valuable employees through those vendors by assigning other duties that are applicable to their responsibilities.”
Taylor reiterated, “I want to thank our board again for understanding this need.”
He continued, “Thanks to [District Business Administrator] Mr. [Paul] Roth for doing the research with our attorneys to make sure that we are within the law in this decision and recommendation.”
“And we are happy to continue to have such valuable members of our community participating in even our distance learning campaigns,” added Taylor, who assured the community: “Those folks that are impacted by that you will here from us with next steps and direction.”
Dr. Ronald Taylor delivers his Superintendent’s Report at the March 16, 2020 South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education meeting.
For the public speaks portion of the meeting — which was held early and live-streamed due to the state-recommended curfew — the community was invited to submit comments for the BOE before the meeting via email.
Most of the two dozen comments submitted ahead of Monday’s meeting voiced support for outsourced workers, such as paraprofessionals, security guards and lunch aides, and urging SOMSD to continue to pay them during the announced two-week shutdown of South Orange and Maplewood schools.
Several public commenters expressed concern that those workers would have to file for unemployment, causing undue hardships and imperiling their continued involvement providing support services for teachers and students. (Last month, a group of parents lobbied the school district to consider making paraprofessionals regular, full-time employees instead of outsourced staff as it has for the past nine years.)
At Monday’s meeting, Taylor read all of the comments, including a couple of test messages, and said he would reply to those who provided contact information.
“We will try to seek out from the online platform those folks’ email addresses and give them a direct reply to that information and share it with the Board of Education,” he said. “If we don’t have their contact information, we will post it for everyone to be able to see.”
With reporting contributed by Bruno J. Navarro.
