The Selma City School Board approved the request by the superintendant to allow 12-month employees of the school system to be able to carryover a maximum of 10 vacation days to the 2012-13 school year.

At the end of the last school year, it was brought to the attention of the school board that 54 employees of the system that are 12-month employees, had not taken their 10 days of vacation. The employees, upset about losing those 10 days were going to take these vacation days at the same time, all 54 of them.

“It was going to shut the system down if they took the days at the same time,” Selma City School Board District 2 representative Brenda Randolph-Obomanu said. “So we decided to carry them over just this one time and then later we need to either change the policy or enforce the policy [on taking vacation days.]”

She said the employees have to take these days between the start of school and the end of the fiscal year. She also said she wasn’t sure of where the miscommunication happened but assured the board would “put this in writing,” so the miscommunication would not happen again.

Prior to this topic being decided on at Thursday’s board meeting, it was also discussed at the work session the week before.

In both meetings, board members were unsure as to how the vacation days rolling over to the next year would affect the system financially.

“Our job is to enforce the policies we have right now,” district 1 board member Holland Powell said. “And we are going to give them an additional 10 days off now and the state will have to be reimbursed. When you take 20 days off, somebody has to do that job …”

Superintendent of Education Gerald Shirley explained the days would not compound, explaining this roll over for vacation days would be a one-time instance.

“What is going to happen is that those people cannot take those days over to next year [2013-2014 year],” Shirley said.

The board voted unanimously to allow these vacation days for 54 employees to roll over and they agreed on convening at a later date to discuss the policies for the future.