By China Cassidy During the Nov. 10 Joseph City Unified School District Governing Board meeting, Superintendent Bryan Fields suggested to the board that the district take an extended break over the Thanksgiving holiday to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 throughout the schools. The district’s break currently consists of Wednesday and Thursday, Nov. 25-26. The district does not hold school on Fridays. Fields cited his concern that the schools will be able to staff their classes and programs should COVID-19 effect a larger portion of the district population. Joseph City High School Principal Eric Miller, agreed with Fields, stating, “We could take a couple of weeks and have a hiatus for in-person learning and do it all online. It could be over Thanksgiving week, and what that would do is kind of reset the quarantine. It could protect our staff because if we have to send half of them home, we just don’t have the subs to manage this.” Fields elaborated more on his reasons for concern saying, “We have policies that when they (staff or students) have symptoms that are COVID-like or actual COVID, there’s so many days you have to stay away from campus because of CDC (Centers for Disease Control) guidelines and the Arizona Department of Health (AZDHS). So, one of my main concerns is how are we going to be able to staff programs and classrooms if we’re making everybody stay away.” Board President Karsten Flake expressed his concern for the missed days. “I would just hate to say yeah, let’s do that, let’s start and we take our week and then we take Thanksgiving and then we’re ready to go back but that’s when the county or the state, or whatever, just like spring break says okay, we’re done. And then we miss two weeks plus.” Flake suggested waiting and evaluating the numbers this week to determine whether a longer break is necessary. “I think we need to take a look as it gets closer and if it does look like we need to take that week of Thanksgiving, we might do something.” The board agreed with Flake and no action was taken. In other business, Fields informed the board that the issues identified with the interest accruing due to credit card use by district employees during the FY2019 audit have already been improved. Because the issue was due to the delay in submitting receipts during a certain timeline to avoid interest charges, between the office staff and recommendations from the business office, the problem has been mitigated and the result will show in future financial reports. Fields stated, “This is something that we will monitor and take steps to mitigate. Some of this interest may not be avoidable, but we will work to eliminate what we can.” In new business, the School Facilities Board okay’d additional structural design and engineering for the elementary and high school roof projects. In other business, the board: * Approved the extra duty position of off-season pool maintenance tech to be paid $1,850 per season. * Approved the retirement of Superintendent/Board Secretary Kathy Mitchell and resignation of instructional aide Paige Murray. * Approved new extra duty positions for Eric Miller as the Joseph City Junior High boys basketball coach and Alyssa Buckley as a substitute custodian.
