GALION, Ohio – The search for the new superintendent of Galion schools has begun.
At Thursday’s board meeting the board went into executive session at the beginning of the meeting. When they came out they announced that they will be using Mid Ohio Educational Service Center in their search for the new superintendent. This will come at no cost to the district and if all goes as planned, board president Jennifer Kuns hopes to have a new superintendent in place by sometime in September.
Mid Ohio ESC in Mansfield will place the job posting for the position on their website at www.moesc.net on July 22. At that time, applicants can apply for the position. Kuns said that on Aug. 12 the application page will close and applications will begin to be reviewed. Interviews will begin taking place around the third week of August and if all goes to plan, Kuns said they hope to have someone hired in early September.
Mark Stefanik, who is the current superintendent of Galion schools, will be leaving the district to take the superintendent job at Currituck County School District in North Carolina.
Stefanik first worked for the district after graduating from college when he was hired for his first teaching job. Stefanik will remain with Galion until Sept. 30 and will start the North Carolina job on Dec. 1. Kuns said that during that time Stefanik will be working on an outline for the new superintendent to make the transition into the position an easy one.
In other hiring news, Stefanik stated in his superintendent recommendations that the district will be looking to hire at least one administration position and three or four more teaching positions before the new school year begins. He said those positions will be posted soon with interviews following after.
For each new first time teacher hired the board requires that those teachers have a resident educator mentor. The following mentors were hired in during the meeting for the new school year: Judy Cortelletti, Cay Faulkner, Nicole Lambright, Heidi Rietschlin, and Linda Wilson.
Another addition for the new school year will be a coaching evaluation form. New Athletic Director Kyle Baughn brought his revised coaching evaluation form to the meeting for the board to review. Baughn said the district has not had a coaching evaluation form since at least the late 90s when then-Athletic Director Jim Ruth did an evaluation on him when he was a coach. Baughn said he wants to bring the evaluations back for several different reasons. One of those reasons is to help coaches grow, as Baugh said the evaluations would help him identify areas where coaches would need improvement and work to build on those areas.
Baughn also said that inventory would be a part of the evaluation. Instead of doing inventory once a year on their equipment like they have been doing, coaches would be required to do an inventory of their equipment once at the beginning of the season and once at the end. This would hold the student athletes responsible for missing and unreturned equipment.
Baughn said that revisions to the evaluations could be made year by year depending on if it would need adjusted or not. The board voted to approve the coaching evaluations.
Also during the meeting Kuns announced that this summer the state has voted to suspend its 5.75 percent sales tax on Aug 7-9 to help parents and teachers save money while doing back to school shopping. This is being labeled as a back-to-school sales tax holiday. During the tax holiday days the following will be exempt from sales and use tax: an item of clothing priced at $75 or less, an item of school instructional material priced at $20 or less, and an item of school supplies priced at $20 or less. There is no limit on how many items consumers can buy, and mail, telephone and online purchases qualify, even if the delivery is made after Aug.. 9. Kuns said themain thing right now is to make people aware of the tax holiday as she said several of the local vendors she talked to didn’t even know anything about it.
The next regular meeting of the Galion school board will be Aug. 20 at 6:30 p.m. in the Middle School Computer Lab.
