The Foster center offers vocational training to nearly 600 high school students.
FARMINGTON – Glenn Kapiloff, a longtime Farmington middle school teacher, will be changing jobs starting February 1, leaving his Technology Education classroom at the Mount Blue Middle School to take the helm of SAD 9’s tech center.
On Tuesday night, SAD 9 board of directors unanimously agreed to appoint Kapiloff, 41, to the post of Foster Regional Applied Technology Center vocational director, which is being vacated by longtime director Ann DeRaspe at the end of January.
He was given a two-year contract with the first year’s salary set at $58,000, plus all benefits afforded to other district administrators.
The center serves nearly 600 students from every high school in Franklin County and Livermore Falls each year. It offers vocational training that allows students to do everything from becoming certified nurses assistants to getting their firefighting certification to becoming a registered EMT.
Kapiloff, who has a master’s degree in industrial education from Illinois State University and is currently working towards a certification of advanced study in educational leadership through the University of Maine at Orono, has taught at the middle school since 1986.
During much of that time, he was also a wrestling coach at the Mount Blue High School and for a three-month period in 2001 served as substitute assistant principal at the middle school.
Since 1980, has been a Major in the U.S. Army Reserves and serves as an instructor with the 98th Division out of Schenectady, NY.
Admittedly nostalgic about leaving the middle school and the students and staff he has worked closely with for so many years, Kapiloff says he is looking forward to the challenges ahead.
“I am very excited. It’s a position I’ve wanted for a long time. Foster Tech does a good job of making kids productive citizens and I admired the instructors for being so sincere and dedicated,” he said Tuesday night.
As a wrestling coach, Kapiloff heard good things about the tech center from his athletes, saying they seemed more excited about learning because of what they had learned there. That made him respect the center’s work and the faculty there.
One of the strengths Kapiloff said he sees in Foster Tech is the versatility of its programming. “It’s really evolved to the needs of the community,” he said. “I want to see that continue.”
Kapiloff and his wife, Sharri, have four daughters ranging in age from 5 to 19.
DeRaspe is scheduled to leave at the end of January at which point Kapiloff will move over from the middle school to begin his new position. The district will advertise for a technology education teacher for MBMS.
On Tuesday night, the district also appointed Melissa Yeaton to fill the position of school health coordinator, which was vacated recently when Jim Fortunato resigned.
A 2001 Community Health Education graduate from the University of Maine at Farmington, Yeaton worked for four years as a family life education consultant/reproductive health specialist for Tri-County Health Services and more recently as a health educator for Cianbro’s healthy lifestyle program.
The board also approved two foreign language exchange trips: One for 13 students taking Spanish to travel to Costa Rica for two weeks in April and another for 10-12 students in upper-level German classes to travel to Germany for 11 days in February.
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