Union: Bring Back Full-Time Clerks

A union that represents clerical workers in Oxford schools pleaded with the school board this week to give hours back to four clerks whose from full time to part time.

The school board, forced to make cuts when the Board of Finance trimmed $420,000 from the originally school budget proposal after it failed at referendum by a 2-to-1 margin, moved the front desk clerks at all four schools from full time to 19.5 hours a week. That means none of the four clerks can collect health insurance benefits.

The school board says it will save about $100,000 a year, but the clerical union president Claire Luce, a secretary at Quaker Farms School whose position is not being affected, said the cuts will have detrimental effects on not only the lives of the clerks being cut, but also the schools where they work. She hopes clerks will be brought back to full time if the budget situation changes.

Luce said she believes it could be a safety issue if only one clerk at the front desk in the afternoon while school is being dismissed.

“To have one person there in the afternoons just won’t work,” she said. “We’re important, too, and it seems like every time (budget cuts happen) we are the ones who get cut.”

School Board Chairwoman said that may have been past practice but is not true with the current board. Luce said “well, that’s not how I feel.”

McKinnon said the board’s goal was to keep all positions in tact and noted that many school districts nationwide are “laying off in masses.”

“Nobody wanted to do this,” she said. “There were other programs we had to take away and to cut from.”