By Paola Tristan Arruda|March 16, 2020 at 8:48 PM EDT - Updated March 17 at 12:04 AM
BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - The Berkeley County School District is prepared for an extended closure of all schools, but they’re working on a way to pay their employees throughout it all.
During Monday’s emergency-called school board meeting, the board gave Superintendent Eddie Ingram “emergency powers” to battle the effects that come with the coronavirus pandemic.
The school district has already implement e-learning experiences which allows students to learn online.
County schools have also started passing out hot lunches and snacks.
These "powers" will allow the superintendent to implement human resource protocol and assign duties. The biggest objective would be to pay employees throughout the closures.
“One priority is the safety and well being of children, for them to have food and support during this process,” school board member Sally Wofford said. “The second is the safety and well being of our employees.”
Board members were concerned with hourly employees, especially those who can't work from home.
Ingram says he was given the authority to pay those employees, if funding, availability, and regulations permit, while also being able to assign them different duties.
“Hourly employees are sometimes not our most highly paid employees but that we value them and in exchange for that, some would be coming into work as needed,” Ingram said. “We’ll be working remotely as much as humanly possible and very few people would come in, only as needed to do things like passing out food and passing out work packets for students.”
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