FARMINGTON — RSU 9 school directors have asked for more financial information on a proposal to restructure staff at the Central Office and Mt. Blue Campus, where the high school and career and technology education center are located.

Superintendent Tom Ward proposed the changes at the board’s Oct. 8 meeting.

Dan Gazette, an administrative assistant to both the superintendent and the director of curriculum/assistant superintendent, retired Oct. 4. That position is vacant and there is a half-time special education secretary position that the district has not filled. Money for both positions are in the budget.

Ward recommended that the part-time secretary position at Central Office be increased to full-time. This person will add MaineCare billing to the job description, which will meet the need for the half-time special education secretary, he said. The Central Office secretary has a background in MaineCare, he said.

He also proposes to designate a full-time secretary position already in Central Office as the human resource specialist. The person is already doing most of these duties, he said.

The plan is to advertise for an administrative assistant to work for Ward and Leanne Condon, director of curriculum/assistant superintendent, and make the half-time special education secretary position a half-time receptionist. Gazette had been acting as administrative assistant and receptionist in some capacity.

Currently there are two full-time positions and two part-time. The changes would make it three full-time and one part-time, Ward said.

With the proposed changes, the office will become more efficient, Ward said.

“It streamlines things and people know who to go to,” he said. “We can stay within the (current) budget except for when we take the part-time person to full-time.”

That person also does free and reduced-priced lunch and breakfast forms for the district’s school nutrition program, he said.

He would like to take the health benefits of $13,925 for the position from the school nutrition account, he said. The account is “quite healthy and well in the black,” he said.

The food services program, also known as school nutrition program, is an enterprise program that supports itself.

There is more than enough in the account to cover the health benefits, he said.

“We want to stay in the black,” he said.

Director Nancy Cosby of Weld said she is concerned for next year and where the health benefits would come from.

Ward said they would come out of the school nutrition program.

The board requested more information on the concept.

“We will bring it back,” Ward said. “Are we headed in the right direction?”

No one objected.

Another proposal is for the Mt. Blue Campus to have the current secretary to Monique Poulin, principal of Mt. Blue High School, become the office coordinator for Poulin and Glenn Kapiloff, director of the Foster Career and Technical Education Center. The secretary would be responsible for handling all financial aspects of the Mt. Blue Campus, Ward said.

Both administrators are in the same office area but in two separate offices.

A secretary for Foster center resigned and the position is currently vacant.

The vacated position would become an office receptionist position, he said.

“This would further promote the vision of Mt. Blue Campus being one,” Ward said.  “A lot of things I am recommending are to make it more efficient and when you are more efficient, you save money.”

dperry@sunjournal.com

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