To help ease the burden on teachers who may have to take extra days off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cullman City School Board changed the system’s personal day policy for this year during its meeting Tuesday morning.

The state provides two personal days to every teacher and the city system provides a third, along with a fourth and fifth, but teachers are responsible for paying the $75 substitute cost for those fourth and fifth personal days.

After it was approved during Tuesday’s meeting, the system will cover the substitute cost for the rest of this school year for teachers’ fourth and fifth personal days if a teacher needs to take them, Cullman City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff said.

“Now employees have five days with no worrying about losing pay for personal days that they have to be out,” he said.

Kallhoff said the system saw around two dozen positive cases of COVID-19 to begin the school — which all came from outside of the school system — and around two dozen more positive cases since the beginning of the year last Wednesday, and the system will continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation and work on plans to keep the system’s students and staff members safe.

Kallhoff also addressed a recent social media video showing one student repeatedly punching another student at Cullman Middle School.

“I want to be clear, this type of behavior will not be tolerated and should not be tolerated on any campus in the school system,” he said. “It shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere, but certainly not the school system.”

The system has a code of conduct to address bullying, harassment, assault, misuse of electronic devices, profanity and cyberbullying, and the student from the video and the student who recorded the video will both have due process and be disciplined according the code of conduct, Kallhoff said.

“I want to thank our teachers, administrators and our school resource officer for responding quickly to the incident, preventing it from going further and investigating it swiftly,” he said.

Kallhoff also gave an update on a few of the ongoing projects around the city school system’s campuses.

He said the new scoreboard for Cullman High School’s football field is nearing completion and should be ready for the Bearcats’ home game on Thursday night against Grissom.

The high school’s new gym floor is nearly complete, and the new bleachers for the gym are expected to arrive in mid-October, he said. In the event that the new bleachers do not get here before the beginning of the basketball season, the gym’s current bleachers will not be removed until the new ones arrive, Kallhoff said.

The installation of the temporary classroom at East Elementary is also nearly complete, with a few items to complete before it can be used by students, he said.

Two classrooms in West Elementary School have been temporarily relocated because of mold, with the air quality test results from the school finding low counts of mold in that area, and Servpro is working at the school to clean out the mold, Kallhoff said.

He said the mold was caused by condensation being formed by the HVAC system, and an HVAC engineer will be coming to the school to take a look at the air conditioning to prevent the problem from reoccurring.

Kallhoff thanked the teachers who were affected by the move for their patience while the mold is cleaned, and said he visited those teachers last week and found that the classes didn’t seem to be affected by the change.

“The kids were engaged and the instructors were just moving along, so we appreciate their flexibility,” he said.

In other business, the board:

• Approved the July 2021 financial report.
• Amended the lunchroom manager salary schedule to include degree.
• Amended support and incentives for National Board Certified Teachers (grandfather and cap local contribution).
• Approved a contract with Yenny Laney, interpreter, not to exceed 19.5 hours per week (local funds) from Aug. 9 to May 27, 2022.
• Approved a contract with Lucero Lejarazo, interpreter, not to exceed five hours per week (local funds) from Aug. 9 to May 27, 2022.
• Approved a contract with Karla Rodriguez, interpreter, not to exceed five hours per week (local funds) from Aug. 9 to May 27, 2022.
• Approved a stipend contract ($100) for Terri Cooper, PD trainer, at West Elementary School (local school funds).
• Approved a contract with Emily Bussman to provide art education services to Cullman City Head Start (Head Start funds) from Sept. 1 to May 31, 2022.
• Approved a contract with Fabian Holland to provide physical/mental health wellness services to Cullman City Head Start staff (Head Start funds) from Sept. 1 to March 21, 2023.
• Approved a contract with Paige Hanson to provide physical education services to Cullman City Head Start (Head Start funds) from Sept. 1 to May 31, 2022.
• Approved stipends to teachers for Math Pacing Guide revisions on July 8, $62.50 for half day (local funds).
• Approved stipends to teachers for attending Grading Parameters meeting on June 30, $62.50 for half-day (local funds).
• Approved stipends to math coaches for attending AMSTI training on July 19-22, $125 per day (local funds).
• Approved stipends to non-certified employees for attending New Employee Orientation on Aug. 2-4, $200 total (local funds).
• Approved stipends to certified employees for attending New Employee Orientation on Aug. 2-4, $375 total (local funds).
• Approved a stipend ($375) for three days to Tracie Kirkwood for EL Teacher Training (EL State funds).
• Approved a stipend to teachers for math training on July 30, $125 per day (ESSER-2 funds).
• Approved Head Start Fiscal Reports for July 2021.
• Approved the surplus of Cullman High School’s bleachers.
• The Cullman City School Board will next meet for a budget hearing on Sept. 9 at 8 a.m. and for a second budget hearing on Sept. 13 at 5 p.m.