BROWNSTOWN

Cooks, custodians, instructional aides and other classified personnel with Brownstown Central Community School Corp. will continue to be paid during the closure of schools because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Some staffers will have a chance, however, to make a little extra cash if they decide to take on projects such as helping provide meals for students at their homes and getting schools ready to reopen.

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Those decisions were made during a special board of trustees meeting Wednesday night at the administration building. On Thursday afternoon, Gov. Eric Holcomb said schools won’t be allowed to reopen before May 1.

Assistant Superintendent Jade Peters said the plan is to pay all employees as if they were at work.

“The ones that have to come to work will get pandemic pay of $2 an hour for all hourly employees,” he said.

It would not affect any salaried employees, and not all classified staff is being asked to work.

“If they are over the age of 60 and they are not comfortable with coming in, we do not want them coming in,” Peters said. “… and hopefully, everybody can get through this pandemic that we are faced with.”

The corporation will have a mandatory shutdown for spring break, which begins Monday and continues through March 27, he said.

“That way, everybody takes a week off,” Peters said.

At this time, school is scheduled to resume April 6, a week after spring break. That gives school officials an extra week to get the facilities ready to go, Peters said.

“We feel like it would be a necessity to have a mandatory shutdown so nobody is in the buildings for the safety of our staff and students,” he said.

Peters said the only real difference for any corporation employee, including teachers and bus drivers, is the bonus pay for classified staff working during the shutdown, which began Friday. Teachers and bus drivers both work under contracts with the corporation.

All employees will continue to be paid as normal if the closure is extended to the end of the school year, Peters said.

Superintendent Tim Taylor said staff working with federally funded programs such as Title I will continue to be paid as normal.

“We have good employees,” he said. “We want to be able to take care of our employees during this time, and we want to keep our employees.”