Policy change for MSBSD

PALMER — After an 18-year-old substitute teacher was arrested for extradition to face sex crime charges in Idaho, the Mat-Su Borough School District has implemented changes in its policy for hiring substitute teachers.

“We did everything that the state requires us to do. We had no way of getting the information,” MSBSD Superintendent Deena Paramo said.

Tyler Fishback was arrested Dec. 6 for extradition to Madison County, Idaho. He graduated from Wasilla High last year and was working as a substitute teacher in the district at the time of his arrest. Alaska State Troopers say he was 17 when the alleged crimes occurred. The Idaho statute he was charged under requires only that the victim be under the age of 16.

Paramo said when Fishback was hired there were no criminal charges filed. For numerous reasons, law enforcement doesn’t disclose if a person is the subject of an investigation. So, the Idaho case didn’t show up on either the state or federal criminal records check that all new employees — including substitutes — have to go through.

Still, Paramo said, in reviewing the case she found a few changes she would like to make.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said.

A letter she released Dec. 14 outlines four changes to the district’s substitute hiring policy. Top on the list is a move to widen the age difference between substitute teachers and the students they would potentially be teaching.

“This issue brought up the whole thing in my mind of ‘why is someone working as a substitute teacher who is just out of high school?’” Paramo said.

Now to substitute teach, a person has to have been out of high school for at least three years. As always, substitutes must have at least a high school diploma. She said she doesn’t think this will make the process of finding substitute teachers harder.

“Our substitute pool is practically 250 people,” she said. And of those, only 20 seemed like they might not meet that three-year requirement.

“Many of them didn’t even choose to be teachers anyway, they chose to be aids or custodians, positions where they’d be working under direct supervision,” Paramo said.

But if it ends up being a problem?

“We’ll do whatever we can to make it not be a problem and go out there and recruit other substitutes if we need to,” Paramo said.

As has been the case in the past, the district will maintain its preference, first for substitutes with teaching certifications, followed by substitutes with academic degrees and lastly for substitutes with only high school diplomas.

“Our goal is to keep the learning moving, and when you have folks that know science and math and the languages, that does,” Paramo said.

Second on the list of changes to policy is a centralization of the substitute hiring process.

“It used to be that they’d get the application online and then they’d go to a school and have a principal or assistant principal interview them,” Paramo said. “We want to take those administrative tasks over.”

The new system will assign substitute hiring to a single administrator. That administrator will fill up the substitute pool and then individual schools can select from that pool of substitutes to have fill in for absent teachers.

The third change calls for a strengthening of the reference-checking process for substitutes. The fourth would implement mandatory training in the 2013-14 school year for all substitutes.

Paramo’s letter of Dec. 14 seems to indicate there had been numerous inquiries about the district policy since Fishback’s arrest.

“I would like to thank each parent and community member who has expressed interest in our practices and policies. Your concern for your children is commendable and your insights and ideas are always welcome,” she writes.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.