OPS to give back pay to early ed teachers following grievance over special education duties

[Omaha Steve]

https://omaha.com/news/local/education/ops-to-give-backpay-to-early-ed-teachers-following-grievance-over-special-education-duties/article_eda63e12-4472-11ef-aa1f-138a2468edbd.html

Lauren Wagner 3 hrs ago

A group of Omaha Public Schools early education teachers will receive back pay after they performed special education services this past school year, even though their positions weren’t in special education.

During a Monday meeting, the OPS school board approved a grievance agreement between the district and the Omaha Education Association, which will provide eight early childhood education teachers 5% of their salary for the 2023-24 school year. The union filed an employee grievance on Oct. 16, 2023, because the teachers — who had a special education endorsement — were being required to provide special education services even though their jobs weren’t in special education.

“There was a shortage of special education teachers and they were doing all of the prep work for their special education students who were in early childhood programs,” said Kathy Poehling, union president. “And they were doing all the services for their students, they were tracking the data — the only thing they weren’t doing was reading the (individual education plan). We felt the workload was above and beyond what a regular classroom teacher would do, so we filed a grievance for that.”

In the agreement, OPS agrees the teachers performed duties outside their job requirements. Poehling said the teachers were located across the district.

FULL story at link. IF anyone knows the free link, please post it.

[GPV]

1. Yeah, our school has stuff like that going on. It's everywhere.