Mansfield City Schools’ board of education special meeting on Monday resulted in a heated discussion over hiring six safety specialists through Maxim Staffing Solutions or hiring nine safety specialists through Mansfield City Schools.
After the discussion, the board voted and narrowly approved hiring the nine safety specialists employed by Mansfield City Schools, which previously had been eliminated by the reduction in force that resulted from state-mandated finanical recovery efforts.
Board members voting in favor of hiring the nine specialists were President Renda Cline, Monica Hubbard, and Dina Davis. Chris Elswick and Cliff Crose cast dissenting votes.
The meeting’s agenda described the positions as part-time employment, not to exceed 29.5 hours at $11.65 per hour, excluding benefits, and paid from the general fund.
Crose said going through Maxim Staffing Solutions would inevitably avoid legal situations and liability because, according to his understanding of the contract, Maxim would assume those responsibilities should the school board decide to terminate a safety specialist.
“Mr. Garverick, the reason I ask about firing, getting rid of people, is we’ve tried to get rid of couple sub custodians, and immediately we’re threatened with lawsuits. We’re better off going with Maxim because that would be their liability, not ours,” said Crose.
Cline responded, “We as a board, we don’t do the daily operations of the buildings. There are administrators in the buildings who take care of the employees whom they supervise. It’s incorrect to say that we hire and we fire and we do this and we do that, because we don’t. That is not our position.”
Board member Chris Elswick questioned the board’s intent on moving to approve the hiring of the nine safety specialists. “Why do we feel the need to hire these people? I just think we’re opening ourselves up to a hard time. It’s going to take up to two months to even get these people in the building. I seriously doubt the commission is going to approve this,” said Elswick in a separate interview.
After the board discussed individual concerns, Cline invited Jen Lepard, MSEA Union President to address the board with the Union’s perspective on hiring safety specialists. Lepard pleaded with the board to vote on approving the hiring of nine safety specialists through the school district.
When the board approved the resolution to hire nine part-time safety specialists, Lepard stated, “I’m pleased with the decision. Can Mansfield hire better employees? Yes, I believe they can. We know who can better serve our school. And I’m not saying anything negative against Maxim, but I think this is a good opportunity for Mansfield schools to hire some people who know our students.”
The Financial Planning and Supervision Commission will meet on Tuesday, October 28 at 4 p.m. in the Raemelton Administrative Building.
