The Amador County Unified School District began their Wednesday evening meeting with a Safety Award presented by Diane Rappaport, the Executive Director of the Tuolumne JPA. The award honors Amador High School as the “Most Improved” out of 4 surrounding counties. According to Rappaport, Amador was chosen because of the swift and impressive clean up of its shop and science labs after multiple waste issues were established. The award has some money attached to it, with 2 checks totaling 15-hundred dollars also presented to the board to be used for future safety needs. Also on the agenda was the Retirement Incentive Pay Conversion Plan, which was pulled from the previous meetings agenda because of ongoing legal discussions. The board approved the plan 6-1 with Board member Porray dissenting.

Two tentative agreements were also on the agenda, including one with the California School Employees Association, and one with the Amador County Teachers Association. The first agreement with the California School Employees Association, or CSEA, involved housekeeping, including such language changes as compensatory time for full time employees and a year long trial run for seniority preferences when it comes to long term absences. The seniority wheel is a common practice in other districts and would allow a part time employee to acquire a full time employee’s work load if said employee were on a long term absence of more than 20 days. Board members questioned whether or not this agreement was taking away flexibility from the district by only allowing employees to step up, as opposed to hiring a sub. But according to staff the agreement is basically “to clean up our practices, and put some consistency in the system.” The agreement was approved 6-1. The tentative agreement with the Amador County Teachers Association was approved 5-2.