Henrico teachers now will be paid for certain extracurricular work, lost planning time

Henrico teachers will be paid for certain extracurricular work they perform voluntarily outside of their regular school day requirements – such as monitoring school weapons scanners, tutoring students and selling tickets to school events after hours – following the unanimous adoption May 8 by the Henrico School Board of a series of updates to employee personnel policies.

As part of the updates, middle and high school teachers also will be compensated on occasions when they lose their daily planning periods because they are needed to cover study halls or other classes or to assist with duties “essential to student health and safety” during those periods.

The revised policies are designed to address concerns the board has heard for months from teachers (including almost 100 who submitted written comments in March) who have been frustrated by what they termed vague language in their contracts requiring them to perform “such duties as may be assigned by principals.” Some teachers said they were spending as many as 12 extra hours weekly performing those duties without extra pay.

Those frustrations have been cited by a number of teachers during the past year as reasons why the school board should pursue a collective bargaining resolution, which would allow teachers to negotiate their pay, hours and working conditions through a union. (In Virginia, collective bargaining is now permitted at the local government level but cannot occur unless a governing body authorizes it.)

Last fall, however, the school board opted not to move forward with the idea but instead tasked Henrico Schools Superintendent Amy Cashwell with updating policies to address some of the concerns it heard from teachers.

The board’s Thursday adoption of personnel policy revisions was the result of that effort, which along the way included feedback and input from the school system’s Teacher Advisory Council and other focus groups, according to Cashwell.

The board’s vote on Thursday updated more than a dozen personnel policies related to teacher contracts, duties, schedules, supplemental pay and professional development. In total, it voted to revise and rename eight policies, retire five by consolidating them into others, and revise three more.

Among the changes adopted by the board were:

• a revision of one personnel policy to clarify specific duties that teachers are obligated to perform according to their contracts (such as parent conferences, hallway and restroom monitoring between classes, and individualized education plan meetings as necessary);

• the addition of an addendum to that policy specifying certain other extracurricular activities for which they now will be compensated, such as tutoring, supervising study hall, providing coverage for another class, working Saturday school, performing weapons scanning duties or performing student activities duties, such as selling tickets during an after-hours event;

• a policy revision that strengthens the language related to planning time for teachers, calling it “essential to the success of HCPS teachers and students” and indicating that principals should limit “any infringements upon planning time to the greatest extent possible.” The revised policy guarantees “at least an average of 30 minutes per day during the school week as planning time” for elementary school teachers and one planning period per day or the equivalent for middle and high school teachers.

The board’s vote also revised policy language related to staff meetings, which had required teachers to participate in regularly scheduled faculty meetings and other meetings called by their principals, as well as division-wide meetings and workshops, among others.

The new language indicates that teachers are expected to attend staff meetings called by their principals but requires those meetings to be “consistent with annual contractual hours of instructional personnel and scheduled of other applicable staff.”

It also explains that while teachers are expected to “attend and support other school-related events outside of the instructional day,” such as back-to-school night, evening parent-teacher conferences and academic or social events (like prom), their contracts now will designate “a specific amount of time and corresponding compensation” for that participation.

“Principals shall ensure that teachers are not unduly burdened beyond the contractual requirements to attend such events,” the new language reads, “though teachers may volunteer to attend events at their discretion beyond their contractual obligations."

Update language in the revised policies specifies that a separate contract be executed “with each employee for any separate supplemented extra-curricular assignment/extended responsibility except those assignments that are a part of the regular class curriculum, or instructional program.” It provides the “building administrator” (principal) with the authority to make supplemental pay assignments “consistent with the categories and pay scale approved by the School Board.”

Supplemental pay that isn’t related to classroom curriculum or an instructional program will not be part of the calculation for employee benefits as part of the Virginia Retirement System, according to the new language.