A former Kentridge High School substitute teacher has filed a grievance with the Kent School District after he discovered he was being paid at a substitute rate when he believes he should have received a teacher’s credential and contract from the district.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
According to the teacher, the district owes him restitution payments on benefits he should have received as a contracted teacher.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The district hired Danny Priest on Oct. 4, 2013, to replace Brent Conley, who was placed on indefinite leave following accusations that he had solicited sex from a minor.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I was all on board about getting the job,” Priest said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Not wanting to rock the boat as a new teacher, he kept his head down when it came to contractual matters. But after working at the school for several months, he brought up the need for a leave replacement contract, which would establish him as a full-time teacher.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kentridge responded that they couldn’t offer that contract because Conley was still in court, although Conley had handed in a resignation form in November. Priest was kept on board with the duties of a full-time teacher, but lacked the bonus time pay that full-time teachers make for their additional responsibilities such as conferences and staff meetings.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until Priest was extended as a summer school teacher that he thought something was wrong, when the district cut his salary from around $30 per hour to $15.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“It was like Kentridge was expecting me to do all the teacher duties but having me paid as a substitute,” Priest said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Leslie Bedke, a representative for the Kent Education Association, said that after a certain number of days the district is required to upgrade a substitute’s contract if that substitute is highly qualified in the material they are teaching. Priest had recently taken certifications to be highly qualified in social studies and English.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Under the terms of the contract, he had to be given a teaching certificate. The law supports us. Certified substitute teachers, after 30 days, must be given a contract,” Bedke said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Because Priest was not a full-time teacher, he also lost out on several grants, Bedke said. Among them were $5,000 for a Troops for Teacher’s grant, she said. Priest served as an Army infantryman in the 2nd Infantry Division and was discharged in 2007.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
School district officials said they have done no wrong in canceling Priest’s contract and are not obligated to provide him with another contract or any financial restitution.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Mr. Priest was not under contract as a teacher. He was a long\u2013term sub, and we are not legally bound to offer teacher contacts after 30 days of service as a substitute,” said district spokesman Chris Loftis in an email. “He was paid at the appropriate long-term-sub rate.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Still, some evidence indicates that the district considered bringing Priest on but dropped the idea midway through his evaluation, Bedke said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“They didn’t want to do an end-of-a-year evaluation,” Bedke said. “They had started the evaluation process but hadn’t completed it.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Teacher evaluations are time consuming processes, she said, but Priest should have been given a contract. Had Priest received a contract, the district would have had to place him in another English or social studies position. But because they waited, he said, he had to find work elsewhere.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Also,” Priest said, “the Union is telling me the district shorted me out of thousands of dollars. So it would be nice to get that.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A former Kentridge High School substitute teacher has filed a grievance with the Kent School District after he discovered he was being paid at a substitute rate when he believes he should have received a teacher’s credential and contract from the district.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19494"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}