New special education teachers in the Watson Chapel School District will receive a one-time bonus of $3,000.
The district board voted 5-0 Monday to allow federal Title II funds to be used for recruitment and retention of new hires. Superintendent Keith McGee cited a critical shortage of special ed teachers in the district and across the nation, which according to a district memo can hinder the WCSD’s ability to provide required services, meet compliance standards and ensure educational opportunities for students with disabilities. Presently, eight to 10 special education teaching positions are open, McGee said.
The bonus would be broken into two payments, the first this December as a mid-year incentive and the second next May upon successful completion of the 2025-26 school year.
“We’ve got to do something to recruit and retain teachers in this department,” McGee said during the regular school board meeting. “Right now, we have five paraprofessionals on an apprenticeship program who are about to get licensure. We have our grow-our-own model.”
The bonus, McGee said, would also help to build morale within the department.
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SIX-YEAR TERMS
Board members will be elected to six-year terms in future elections.
Following a motion from Donnie Hartsfield and a second by Rosemary White, the WCSD board voted 5-0 to lengthening the terms from the present five years. Under Act 503 of this year’s state Legislature, each district must determine whether a school board term should last four or six years, so that “as nearly as possible, an equal number of positions are filled every school board election.”
Said Hartsfield: “It gives you more time to be on there, and then instead of having to run every three or four years – like, right now, there are five (years in a term) – and, I mean, it’s good because once you get elected, it’s like, ‘Well, daggum, I don’t have to do this again in two years,’ so I felt like instead of going to four, because we already do five, we can go to six.”
Act 503 also requires terms for board members elected in 2025 to expire in 2030 for districts adopting six-year terms. (No one in Watson Chapel was elected this year.) For other board members, terms set to expire in 2026 and 2027 will expire in 2026; and terms set to expire in 2028 and 2029 will expire in 2028.
In Watson Chapel, Alan Frazier in Zone 1; Kevin Moore in zones 1, 2 and 4; White in Zone 3 and Connie Compton in zones 3 and 5 will be up for election in 2026, under new legislation. Frazier’s and Moore’s terms were to expire this November, but Act 405 has moved school elections to the date of the preferential primary election in March. Compton’s and White’s terms were to expire in 2027.
Terms for Mack Milner in Zone 2, Hartsfield in Zone 4 and Goldie Whitaker in Zone 5 will expire in 2028, since they were originally set through 2029.
PERSONNEL MOVES
The district approved the hires of: Roderick Austin from part-time to full-time mechanic; Tashiba Banks as special education lead teacher; Tiffany Davis as junior high career and technical education teacher; LaDonna Hall as secondary English teacher; Kenya Hudson and Tamia Parker as elementary teachers; Terry Lawson as dean of students; and Cachet Rayford as assistant principal.
Cornelius Christopher turned in his resignation as teacher and coach.