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CURTIS OSTRANDER	DUAINE HARDING
ELEANOR TODD	ELMER "BUD" HAHN
GERVASE KILEY	MARIAN SUTTON
ORLO KIRKUM	SLAVA KOKOTOVICH
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Stimulus funding reinstates
RCS clinicians

by CHRIS GRAY
Observer Staff Writer

      Romeo Community Schools will take advantage of federal funding to provide more time to helping at-risk students.
       The Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution to reinstate two full-time reading clinicians and the equivalent of one full-time elementary teacher.
       By using a combination of grant funding to hire the clinicians, administration says the hires will have a neutral impact on the otherwise strained budget.
       Secretary Jennifer White was not present for the Oct. 12 meeting.
       Over the summer, the board had to cut various places in the district's budget to keep it balanced, including staff members. Within those job cuts were two reading clinicians.
       Reading clinicians work with at-risk students, and when two were eliminated there were three left to serve the district's five elementary schools. Along with their responsibilities they also provided release time to teachers with study skills classes. However, this began to cause issues since they couldn't provide the same amount of teaching time to students.
       "We made the recommendation thinking that we would remain in compliance with providing services for our kids," said Superintendent Joe Beck.
       Christine Scarborough, curriculum facilitator, explained that the curriculum office found a solution in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, also known as stimulus funds.
       She said stimulus funding can be used for Title I purposes, such as reading clinicians, but only if they're engaged in learning activities that comply with Title I programs.
       Title I provides supplemental funding to districts to assist schools with the highest student concentrations of poverty.
       "What this recommendation proposes is that we use these federal grant dollars to fully fund the salaries of the reading consultants in the Title I buildings," she said. "We can do this only, however, if we remove the study skills classes from their daily schedules."
       Three of the five elementary buildings qualify for Title I funding, meaning the remaining buildings would use section 31a state money to provide reading consultants.
       As part of this solution, a new teacher or two part-time teachers would be hired to take over the study skills and literacy classes.
       Interim Business Director Mike Dixon said that by moving the reading clinicians and having a teacher do the study skills class instead, it is actually a positive impact on the general fund.
       "Some of the reading clinicians' time was spent in study skills with MEAP (Michigan Education Assessment Program) tests and some other activities, and those times can't be charged to the grant, so they were being charged to the general fund anyway," said Dixon. "It'll be cheaper to hire one full-time teacher or two part-time teachers than it is to cover in excess of one-third of the salary of three (clinicians)," he said.
       With the stimulus funds being depleted by 2010-11, Beck said a combination of Title I and 31a state money will be used in order to continue financing the clinicians.
       He said the two reading clinicians who were switched to other positions in the district have the option of being reinstated, but if they chose not to the district may hire new workers.
       "We need to sit down with the union and say now how do we go back and reverse the musical chairs we had going on when people move from position to position," he said after the meeting. "We're going to start talking this week about how to proceed with the assignments."