Pine Bush changes course on virtual instruction

By Kerry Butrick Dowling
Posted 11/2/21

Covid-19 is an ongoing concern for school districts in our area and across the country with district officials working hard to combat Covid-related hardships. At the Pine Bush Central School District …

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Pine Bush changes course on virtual instruction

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Covid-19 is an ongoing concern for school districts in our area and across the country with district officials working hard to combat Covid-related hardships. At the Pine Bush Central School District Board of Education Meeting on Tuesday, October 26, district officials discussed the ongoing work being done to combat Covid-related difficulties.

The district announced that due to the growing number of quarantined students and a lack of tutors to cover them effectively and efficiently, beginning Monday, October 25, 2021, quarantined students in grades 3-12 will be offered virtual instruction. The option is only available for quarantined students. Students who are absent but not on the quarantine list cannot attend virtually. Students in grades K-2 will continue to be offered tutoring support.

As of September, the district’s previous policy was to offer students in quarantine a tutoring option. “We shifted how we were dealing with that because the tutoring piece simply wasn’t working adequately for a whole lot of kids so we wanted to make sure everyone had access to continuing their education,” explained Pine Bush Superintendent of Schools Tim Mains.

At the October 26 meeting, Pine Bush Board of Education Meeting, district officials also discussed substitute teaching shortages and the plan devised to lessen the issue.

“Right now, we have an extreme shortage of substitutes willing to take jobs. We’re averaging on a daily basis about fifty to sixty absences a day. We’re having about forty to fifty of those uncovered. So even though there are a lot of folks on our substitute list when we call out to take a sub job very few people are accepting those jobs and that’s creating a problem internally in the building as they scramble to find folks on staff who can cover those classes,” said Superintendent Mains. He went on to share that whenever the district looks to do professional development or any trainings that require a group of teachers together the district doesn’t have enough substitutes to cover.

In order to combat this adversity, the district worked to create a permanent substitute position. “The notion is that we would basically create a permanent sub position which is something that we’ve done previously in this district, not in recent years, but I’m told that this is something Pine Bush had done before I was here as superintendent and certainly something that I’ve done in other districts,” said Superintendent Mains.

Permanent substitutes will be offered the guarantee of employment for a long duration and will be compensated at a higher rate. The pay rate will be targeted at just under the starting step of the salary schedule for a teacher and include benefits, but does not include paid time off. Of the new substitute positions Superintendent Mains said, “It is our hope that we will be able to fill those positions and be able to cover more of the absences that we are currently experiencing and also be able to deploy those folks to a specific location when we need a group of subs to cover for professional development.” When asked if the substitutes would be certified, Superintendent Mains confirmed that they would all be certified teachers.

Parent-guest speakers in attendance also addressed their concerns over the mask mandate and guest attendance in the buildings for events like parent-teacher conferences that in recent years were held in person, but due to Covid have since become virtual. At the end of the meeting, district officials shared that the current framework is in place due to a mandate put in place by the New York State Department of Health in August as well as the Covid re-opening plan that all districts were required to submit prior to school starting. In the event that the guidelines change during the school year, the district will notify parents and make the appropriate changes.