RSU 73 board adopts more equitable teacher stipends

LIVERMORE FALLS — Regional School Unit 73 board members approved a trip for the Spruce Mountain High School softball team and adopted revised stipends for co-curricular and extra-curricular activities Thursday night.

They also remembered longtime staff member Cathy Nichols who recently passed away.

“We extend sympathy to her family,” board member Shari Ouellette said.

Softball coach Clint Brooks requested permission to take just over a dozen softball players to Coco Beach, Fla., next April for spring training.

He said students are raising the approximately $1,000 needed for each girl. He said the last time softball players attended Florida spring training in 2009 as many parents traveled with them as players.

“This would be a great experience for the kids and they can become acquainted with other kids. Some from 2009 maintained contact for several years,” he said.

Approving a standard list of stipends for leading, advising or coaching sports and other activities is perhaps the final part of the teacher contract, Superintendent Kenneth Healey said.

The district’s teachers’ union developed the amount to be paid for each sport or other activity based on the number of years a teacher has been leading the group or coaching and the number of students participating.

“This is true equity and fairness,” Healey said.

The two districts that merged four years ago — RSU 36 in Livermore Falls and the Jay School Department — had a very different stipend payment scale, he said.

Healey said the increase for 2015-16 will be about $18,000 or $19,000, and for the following year, about $20,000 more.

In other matters, the board approved making Alpine and Nordic skiing a dual sport, accepted the resignation of longtime special services educational technician Jennifer Capen and reappointed board Chairwoman Denise Rodzen as at-large director for District VI for the Maine School Management Association board of directors.