Nahant seeking school volunteers

NAHANT – School officials, facing a budget that eliminates six staff as well as basic janitorial supplies, are seeking donations and volunteers.Officials are asking that citizens donate cash and consider volunteering to substitute teach.”We want to work with community volunteers – we need substitute teachers,” said School Committee member Lissa Keane at the board’s meeting last week. “We are absolutely looking for donations of consumables, but prefer cash rather than piece mail,” explaining that the school needs toilet paper, for instance, that will fit in the dispensers in the rest rooms.School officials proposed the $260,000 override to fill a 2012 budget shortfall due to a $113,000 reduction in state and federal funds coupled with an increase in special-education costs. Voters rejected the override at the April 30 Town Election, but passed the measure at Town Meeting the same day. Selectmen held a Special Election on June 25 to revisit the question and voters rejected the override again.Superintendent Philip Devaux told the School Committee the override had resulted in six staff members being laid off – four paraprofessionals, the technology teacher and the art teacher. These layoffs combined with the budget cuts means that the school will have no art, music, or technology program.During and after the override debate many community members suggested volunteers could fill in and provide enrichment activities. But Devaux said Wednesday that nobody has stepped up to volunteer yet. But he said there could be problems if someone does.”If I have an art teacher providing art and then people volunteer to provide art, then there is a union question as to whether these people are taking union jobs,” Devaux said last Wednesday.In fact, Devaux said that a state representative from the teacher’s aides union already contacted him – but not made a formal objection – about a proposal by parents to open the library one or two hours a day. The override’s failure prompted cutting the library budget and library aide position. But Devaux said that because that position was a union position in the past, it is open to a grievance filing by the union.But it is very questionable whether a grievance might be filed.A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Teachers Association referred the matter to the local union. Teachers Union President Mary Peever – who said she believed that the teachers aide union must file the grievance – said that volunteers have always been welcome in Nahant schools.”Right now, we have not been asked to grieve,” she said. “If the community comes in and wants to give us a hand, we have always been welcome to that and always will be.”Furthermore, a grievance might be a waste of the union’s effort, as the former library position was full-time while the volunteer might work as few as five hours a week, Devaux said.”The outcome (of the grievance filing) has to benefit the union,” Devaux said. “The outcome would be that we would stop the process, the outcome would not be that we would hire a union employee. We will go forward with (the proposal) and see what happens.”But the unions don’t present the only potential hurdle for volunteers. State licensure requirements might also cause problems. Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) media relations director JC Considine wrote in an email that the licensure stature does not address volunteers and cautioned that the department does not have the full facts about any Nahant volunteer proposal. However, he noted that teachers need to be licensed in order to give credits for any course.”What the statute does say is that an educator employed by the school district has to hold a teaching license, Considine wrote. “So the teacher of record in the classroom who would teach the curriculum and give any credits for the course would need to be licensed.”Ironically, Devaux opened the school committee meeting by noting that the DESE’s Highly Qualified Teacher Report showed that 100 perc