Gilman looks at alternative hiring options for future

Gilman School Board pondered the question of whether to hire an experience-based employee for the second semester during Monday’s School Board meeting.

Due to the recent strain to find teachers to fill positions, District Superintendent Walter Leipart suggested to the board of hiring an applicant that is looking to pursue an experience-based license. This license would only be valid within the district, if they were to switch districts, the license would become null and void.

Leipart said “Three years ago, the state of Wisconsin authorized experience-based licenses for teachers in vocational areas.”

Working with this experience-based license would also give the applicants experience to take some additional training in teacher practices.

An example of this would be if an applicant came in with an agricultural background and has worked in a feed mill or a farm in the past, then they would be eligible to work in the district toward an experienced-based license.

Board member Chris Skabroud asked if this experience- based employee would only be for the rest of the year.

Leipart assured him that they would only contract with the applicant for the second semester. They would have to go through the renewal process to be considered for hiring in future years.

If no one is chosen for the experience-based licensure, then the district would have to hire a long-term substitute for the rest of the year to fill that position.

Leipart said “Students are already signed up and interested in taking these courses, we can’t just cancel the course.”

Leipart reminded the board members that this is just a concept to start thinking about and that no final decisions would be made at this time.

The board agreed that they would like to have all board members present to be able to discuss the matters further.

In other business:

• An additional district goal has been added to the list of district goals set in place for graduates. The added goal describes a graduate being career, life and college ready upon graduation. To do this, the district plans to develop a Portrait of a Graduate report card that addresses career, life, and college readiness metrics by the end of the 2022-2023 school year.

• There was a mistake in the absenteeism with the E-Succeed program, which gave a negative effect on students’ report cards. Due to the mistake in the attendance, it will take a while to get the E-Succeed students to show a significant progress report.

• The role of the Dean of Students will be reviewed to see if there are any issues since the job was split between three teachers. Currently, the only issue is finding time to speak with Deans when the Superintendent isn’t available to answer questions.

• The district is in the second phase of their grant application. The first grant application is for new playground equipment for the elementary students. The second application is for the Fab Lab in the high school.