Final Plan for Youth Advocates Goes Before Board Monday

Costs to increase 14.8%

On Monday, August 10, the Administration's' final plan for Youth Advocates instead of Security Guards at the high school will go before a vote of the school board. Wanna bet that the board will vote 7-0 to approve it? We hear Vegas is laying odds of 20-1.

Administration found a group that operates via the United Way that will provide us with two Youth Advocates at a cost of $45,000. At 7 hours per day and a 175-day contract, that works out to $18.37 per hour for each. That's $5.00 more per hour than the $13.27 per hour the Administration planned to pay Youth Advocates hired under Local 60. It's also $2.37 per hour more than we paid the contracted Security Guards. Gee...don't you just wonder why the sudden change of heart and move away from hiring staff? They were so adamant about that in our last episode.

Notably, a large part of the rationale for hiring FTE Youth Advocates as district employees was that the security guards were not authorized to touch any student, making it difficult to quell physical confrontations. But...wait...don't we have the same problem with these contracted "Youth Advocates"?

Read the Situation Report for the 8/10/09 meeting