At the first meeting of its new fiscal year, the Cazenovia Central School District Board of Education welcomed three new members, elected a new president and vice president, made annual appointments and said goodbye to longtime assistant superintendent Bill Furlong.
Meeting in the Burton Street Elementary School library meeting room last Thursday, July 9, while the middle school undergoes summer renovations, the board welcomed new members Jennifer Parmalee and Lou Orbach to their first meeting after being elected in May. The third new board member, David Mehlbaum, was unable to attend due to a family emergency.
As the first order of business at its annual reorganizational meeting, the board unanimously elected Jan Woodworth as the new board president and Leigh Baldwin as the new vice president.
The board also made its annual committee appointments, which included Woodworth, Orbach and Baldwin to the personnel committee; Woodworth, Parmalee and Lisa Lounsbury to the finance and audit committee; Orbach, Parmalee and Kathy Hahn to the policy committee; and Hahn, Baldwin and Mehlbaum to the buildings committee. Other ad hoc committees will be created as specific issues necessitate it, as was done last year, Reilly said.
Other annual appointments made by the board included Pat Marzeski as district clerk and deputy district treasurer, Sheryl Conley as the district treasurer and Julie Mattina as the tax collector.
The board also re-adopted all policies and codes of ethics in effect during the previous year, adopted the district mileage reimbursement rate as 58 cents per mile, adopted the district building use fee as $42 per hour for the 2015-16 school year and named theCazenovia Republican as one of its two official newspapers.
A number of the annual appointments for district positions could not be filled last week due to the unfilled statuses of the assistant superintendent and superintendent of building and grounds positions, from which Furlong and David Hazer, respectively, resigned at the end of the 2014-15 school year. Superintendent Matt Reilly said the district is currently working to fill those positions as soon as possible, and had interviews scheduled to occur last week.
“These are exciting times, exciting changes,” Reilly said, while also thanking Furlong and Hazer for their years of service and wishing them good luck in the future.
Also at the meeting, the board approved the 2015-16 committees on special education for the district, approved the district’s participation in the national school breakfast and lunch programs, approved a revised high school handbook and kept the board’s regular monthly meeting schedule as 6:30 p.m. on the third Monday of every month, beginning in September.
The board’s next scheduled meetings included a work session on Monday, Aug. 10, and a regular meeting on Monday, Aug. 24.
A full listing of the board’s organizational appointments and actions can be viewed by the public at the district office — temporarily located in Burton Street Elementary School for the summer — and on the district website at cazenoviacsd.com.
Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached [email protected]
