District Looks For One Person To Fill Two Positions

With Marie Guidry and Joseph Kish both on the verge of retirement, the needs a new business manager and assistant to the superintendent, respectively.

But rather than getting two people to do those jobs, the district is merging those positions into one, superintendent Susan McGinley said Thursday. They'd effectively be Easton Area's chief operating officer.

And as the school board met Thursday evening, they voted to pay the Pennsylvania Association of School Boards $8,500 to search for someone to fill that position. 

College Hill resident Curt Ehly questioned why the board was only going through the PASB to find someone for the position. The response he got: it would cost $15,000 to advertise the position for a week.

The vote to contract with the PSBA was a precursor to the evening's main event: the first of three budget meetings. The district has a roughly $10 million hole to fill in before passing the budget, but Thursday night's meeting provided little to work with, as school principals told the board they were already pretty stretched.

"They're not going out to buy things and stick them in the closet," Guidry said. "Most of them are very frugal."

Tracy Piazza, principal of on the South Side, told the board she has $124 to spend on each of her 574 students.

When the school needed new furniture, she simply inherited it from other schools that were remodeling. When a pair of teachers wanted to send their students on a class trip -- at a cost of $700 -- they applied for a grant to do it.

"Yes, teachers spend out of their own pocket," Piazza said, although not as much as they used to.  "The amount of money my colleagues and I spend out of our own picket is staggering." 

Almost 70 percent of the school district's $141 million expenses comes from salaries and benefits. The board will hold its next budget meeting on Thursday, March 10 at 6:30 p.m.