FAYETTEVILLE — In their last meeting before the 2008-09 school year begins, Fayette County Board of Education members on Monday unanimously approved the first reading of a policy that would allow retired educators to serve as substitute teachers for an unlimited number of days in subject areas deemed as “critical need” and “shortage.”

As the policy is written, those areas consist of English, language arts, speech, journalism, reading, social studies, drivers education, physical education, health, school library-media, art, foreign language, science, math, family and consumer science, industrial arts, elementary education, business, career and technical education, special education, music, school counselor and administration.

The science category includes biology, chemistry, general science and physics.

“There presently exists within Fayette County ... an insufficient number of available substitute teachers who are not retired and who hold appropriate certification and training to meet the projected need for substitute teachers in the following areas of critical need and shortage,” reads the policy, regarding the subjects listed.

If enacted as written, the policy would not affect a retiree’s monthly retirement benefit, and retired teachers would be employed on an expanded basis “only when no other teacher who holds certification and training in the area and who is not retired is available and accepts the substitute assignment.”

The policy would be effective for the upcoming school year and would be revisited by the Fayette County Board of Education for annual renewal.

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In other business, board members fielded a complaint from a woman over the absence of handicap accessibility at 82-year-old Nuttall Middle School, which is scheduled to reopen to teachers on Thursday and to students a week from today.

The state school board cleared the way last Thursday for Fayette County to reopen the school that it closed in February by a 3-2 vote.

The county school board reversed itself and voted 3-2 to reopen the school earlier this summer with a newly constituted board following an election in May that saw the defeat of a board member who had voted for closure in February.

The woman, whose daughter attends Oak Hill Elementary School, referred to herself as an “outside observer” regarding the six-month saga surrounding Nuttall Middle School.

She lamented the fact special-needs students are unable to attend Nuttall Middle School — regardless of its reopening — due to the fact it is not handicap accessible. That compels such students to endure longer bus rides to another school, she argued, which is one reason the board gave for reopening Nuttall in the first place.

“This is a problem, as far as I can tell,” she stated. “You tell us to vote for the (excess) levy. At the same time, I’m paying tax dollars for a school that my daughter can’t even step into. It’s a shameful outrage that there’s a school in this county in 2008 that’s not handicap accessible.”

The board made no comments or decisions on the matter.

— E-mail:

mhill@register-herald.com