4 AISD admin contracts extended
By Melinda L. Lucas
A one-year contract extension was approved for principals Glen Hill at Albany Junior/Senior High School and John Gallagher at Nancy Smith Elementary School, along with similar offers for district business manager Angelyn Faith and director of student services Leigh Lowe, following a closed session at the end of Monday’s regular school board meeting, postponed a full week because of the weather.
Five percent raises were approved in the same motion, which was made by Kelly Head and seconded by Ginny Ivy.
Hill is finishing his first year with Albany ISD on a 12-month probationary contract, while Gallagher will complete his second year at NSES this spring. The agreement approved this week extends their duties through June of 2022.
The meeting was closed after regular business at 8:00 p.m. and reopened briefly with contract action at 9:21 p.m. before adjournment a few minutes later.
Missed Weather Days
AISD superintendent Jonathan Scott presented an application for a waiver for the missed school days due to last week’s statewide winter storm event.
“TEA has given us the opportunity to apply, but there has to be evidence of busted pipes, lack of electricity or water, or other exceptions,” said Scott. “We were fortunate to maintain electricity and water during the week, unlike many other areas, but we had leaks on our campuses that would have made it impossible to conduct in-person classes, and we learned really quickly last Monday morning that remote learning was not going to be possible because of access and outages around us.”
Scott expects the waiver to be approved by TEA, but said that if it is not, the district will need to make up 830 minutes in addition to the two built-in bad weather days.
Other Business
•The board passed a resolution to be able to pay the staff for the days they weren’t on campus last week, and also pay time and a half to maintenance staff that worked during that time.
•Because classes were cancelled on the last official day of the six weeks, Feb. 19, the period was extended to the end of the day on Monday, Feb. 22.
•The May 1 board election was cancelled because there are no opposed races.
