By Janie Southard
jsouthard@dailystandard.com Celina City Schools board of education has eliminated four full-time teaching positions effective Aug. 1 and hired a new principal for East elementary school.
Michelle Duncan will begin a three-year contract as East principal as approved by the board at Monday's regular meeting. She is currently elementary principal for Parkway Local Schools where she is in charge of 23 teachers, nine support staff and 245 students. Her salary will be $64,310.
Duncan replaces Principal Matt Miller, who has accepted the position of director of instruction and student services for Celina schools. The position combines the special ed director position, curricular responsibilities and other pupil personnel services and will pay $76,149.
The board also approved a three-year contract for East Assistant Principal Diane Kramer, who will serve half-time at $32,155. This position was cut from full time as part of the school's budget reduction plan.
Satisfying further cuts in the $790,000 budget reduction plan approved in January, three K-6 teachers and one high school teacher have been laid off. The teaching contracts of Lindsay Simons, second grade, Abby Fourman, fifth grade, Christine Lugo, physical education, and Esther Martin, high school English, will be suspended effective Aug. 13 for financial reasons. "We certainly hope to regain these teachers in other positions through attrition, but, at this point, we just don't know what may be available," district Superintendent Fred Wiswell said following the meeting.
Teachers Janet Miller and Christine Boley have notified the board of their intentions to retire at the end of this school year. Miller, elementary music teacher, has 35 years of service; Boley, a fifth-grade teacher, has 31 years.
In his report to the board, Wiswell said negotiations with Celina Education Association will be held May 7 and 8, and negotiations with the classified bargaining unit will take place the week of May 24. At last year's negotiations both unions agreed to no pay increase for one year.
Board representatives to the negotiations are Matt Gilmore and Tom Rable.
Business Manager Mike McKirnan told board members one boiler has been purchased and district maintenance workers have removed the old boiler, which has "saved the district a lot of money." Another boiler still needs to be purchased for about $22,000. Both original boilers were installed when the Celina Education Complex was built in 1924.
Rick Killian, sales consultant for Cafe Terminal, a cafeteria debit system, made a 15-minute presentation at the board meeting. The system, currently in use at Coldwater, Fort Recovery, St. Henry and Marion Local school districts, eliminates cafeteria tickets, permits prepayment for lunches and automatically generates state-required reports.
"Parents really like the prepayment aspect. Coldwater takes in $35,000 to $40,000 each fall in prepayment," Killian said.
There is no singling out of students on free or reduced cost lunches, so more students participate in the lunch program, according to the representative.
Startup cost, including the computer, is $4,800 for one serving line, $10,500 for three, etc.
The board will give further consideration to the matter.
McKirnan has issued a cry for help regarding Friday's barbecue chicken dinner for the Gene Green Vocational Scholarship Fund. "Unfortunately it's the same day as prom so we need servers and we need to sell more tickets," he said.
As of Monday less than half the tickets had been sold. McKirnan said in the 18 years the fund-raiser has operated, more than $89,000 has been raised for local scholarships.
Auction for the Tri Star house at 1012 Fleck Ave. will take place at 7 p.m. June 24 at the house site, board members also learned.
The June board meeting has been moved from June 28 to June 21 at the education complex. |
