By Lisa Wilcox
Staff Writer
WOODLAND — Members of the Woodland, New Sweden and Westmanland school boards met at Woodland School on Dec. 12 for a joint committee meeting of School Union 122.
During the meeting, officers were elected for the year 2013. Wanda Anderson of the Woodland school board, Debbie Eustis-Grandy of the New Sweden school board and Pat Anderson of the Westmanland school board were unanimously re-elected as chairman, vice chairman and secretary respectively.
The board also approved adding Jessica Smith, formerly Belanger, to the Recertification Steering Committee and, at Interim Superintendent Roland Caron’s suggestion, also adding New Sweden Principal Laurie Spooner to the committee in order to have administrative representation.
The board then discussed and approved sharing School Union secretary Ricketta Belanger with New Sweden School as Kitty Doar, the current New Sweden secretary, is retiring at the end of the month. Belanger will split her duties between School Union 122 and New Sweden, working out of the New Sweden School.
Sharing Belanger’s duties will prevent New Sweden from having to hire a full-time replacement for Doar. This move will save New Sweden money, as they will only pay half of Belanger’s salary. The other half will come from the grant that is currently used to pay Belanger. The remaining grant funds will be dispersed elsewhere, according to Caron.
“These are the times to make these types of decisions,” said Caron, adding that it is a good way to save money without having to eliminate positions.
The board also discussed the possibility of moving School Union 122’s office to New Sweden from the space they currently rent in Woodland. New Sweden now has the room to house the school union’s office. The board decided to wait until their next meeting to vote on the move, as they want to examine the financial impact moving the office would have on the town of Woodland.
Also on the board’s agenda and unanimously approved were a change to the current employee policy that would provide an employee with an additional floating holiday after 15 years of service, and the current cost-sharing structure of the board with Westmanland at 3.3 percent, New Sweden at 32.1 percent and Woodland at 64.6 percent.
Chairman Wanda Anderson and Caron spoke about their recent attendance at the Maine School Management Association workshop in Augusta. They both praised the session and recommended anyone who is able to attend do so in the future.
The board also re-examined their current policy on what constitutes a quorum for each school board, as currently a certain amount of members from each board needs to be present to have a quorum. The board unanimously approved a quorum of the union, instead of the board, as long as one member from each board is present.
No definite date was set for the next School Union 122 meeting, but it is anticipated to be in June or July.
