RUMFORD – With six weeks to go before the beginning of the school year, SAD 43 has four professional positions to fill.
Superintendent Jim Hodgkin said following Monday’s board meeting that positions for seventh- and eighth-grade teachers at Mountain Valley Middle School, a special education teacher at the middle school and a district social worker remain unfilled.
Board member David McKivergan, chairman of the Personnel Committee, said interviews for those positions are scheduled during the next week or so. He said, too, that the low turnover could be largely due to a philosophy begun a few years ago that aims to hire the most qualified teachers who have graduated from college locally or who have ties to the area.
At Monday’s meeting, the board hired former SAD 44 teacher Heidi Steele as a second-grade teacher at Meroby Elementary School, and former educational technician Cheryl Finley as a third-grade teacher at Meroby. Mary Ellen Carrier, a local woman, was also hired as a half-time secretary at Meroby.
In other matters, Hodgkin said Maine School Management and the Maine Municipal Association oppose the Taxpayers Bill of Rights initiative expected to go before voters statewide in November. Although he said the board would likely not take a stand on the issue, he strongly opposes it, too.
“This would make the process of approving a school/town budget much harder,” he said. “We already have a difficult time getting people to the polls.”
He believes residents have a way of lowering school and town budgets by turning articles down.
He said that adoption of TABOR would increase the number of times a person would have to go to the polls to approve or disapprove of a budget.
Also on Monday, the board approved several policies, set dates for finance and policy committees meetings, and established memberships and chairmanships for each of the three committees.
They also hired Kristin Simanek as coach of the Mountain Valley High School boys’ junior varsity soccer team.
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