Gwangju Superintendent Candidate Lee Jeong-seon Promises 'Full Expansion of Staff Welfare System'

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Yoon Jamin] Lee Jeongseon, a preliminary candidate for Superintendent of Education of Gwangju Metropolitan City, has promised to fully expand welfare programs for school staff.

On the 2nd, the candidate held his 10th policy announcement meeting and pledged "Creating Schools Where Everyone is an Owner," which includes a fair personnel system for the transformation of Gwangju education, reduction of school workload, expansion of staff welfare, and strengthening accountability and autonomy of private schools.

He stated, "We will reduce workloads so that teachers can focus on teaching and student life education, and establish a close administrative support system to assist students and teachers."

To build a fair personnel system, he plans to establish and apply three personnel principles: ▲ operation of a staff jury panel during personnel appointments ▲ expansion of open recruitment to bring in private experts ▲ expansion of position open recruitment system.

The staff jury panel will be composed of 20 members selected through open recruitment each time personnel decisions are made, participating in the evaluation and selection process to enhance fairness in personnel management.

As measures to reduce school workload, he proposed ▲ establishing the Gwangju Education Citizen Governance Promotion Institute at the City Office of Education to handle after-school programs, care services, school violence prevention, educational welfare, and village education community tasks ▲ updating school work manuals every three months ▲ newly establishing and operating school work support centers, student rights teams, school support teams, and school facilities teams at education support offices ▲ forming dedicated administrative teams at each school level, autonomous operation of teacher-administrative staff systems, consolidation of committees, and simplification of ledgers.

For staff welfare measures, he suggested ▲ fully expanding welfare programs for school staff, which have been more passive compared to other cities and local governments ▲ raising the basic score for customized welfare expenses for staff to 1000 points ▲ providing 1 million KRW once for staff childbirth support ▲ providing 500,000 KRW once for staff undergoing infertility treatment.

Regarding private school management, he emphasized, "Based on the revised Private School Act, we will strengthen the public nature of private schools through making school management committees deliberative bodies, entrusted recruitment of new private school teachers, and open recruitment of administrative staff," adding, "At the same time, we will implement non-discriminatory educational administration such as student allocation based on region and scale, and support a certain percentage of educational environment improvement project costs."