Metro Gives Employees Two Hours a Week to Volunteer in Schools

Employees of Metro Government will have two hours a week of paid time off to spend volunteering in public schools. Mayor Karl Dean made the executive order Wednesday.

The city’s roughly 11,000 workers will get one hour to spend in classrooms or beautifying school grounds. Another hour is for travel back and forth.

Mayor Dean says his department heads are creative and should be able to handle the weekly absences. He says the slight hardship helps the city meet what he views as an ultimate goal.

“If we’re spending some money by allowing a Metro employee to volunteer for an hour a week, I’m ok with that because the result of that is going to be what the city fundamentally needs, which is strong schools.”

The Pencil Foundation will administer the program and help ensure Metro staffers are following through on their volunteer work.

Mayor Dean says he hopes to expand the volunteer effort beyond city government.

“We’re going to encourage not only Metro employees to do this, but I’d like to encourage the private sector, the corporate world here in Nashville, which have been great citizens, great supporters of public education, to do the same thing.”

To apply to all Metro workers, the Civil Service Commission has to sign-off. Separate entities such as the Metro Transit Authority or Airport Authority would have to adopt the administrative leave policy on their own.