HOULTON, Maine — Problems with the district’s technology has prompted the RSU 29 school board to hire a full-time assistant for the remainder of the school year to help mitigate the problem.
The board approved the new position during Monday night’s regular meeting and authorized Superintendent Mike Hammer to negotiate the level of pay.
The district has been using a technology assistant since the start of the school year, and paid for that position with money in the long-term substitute account. Hammer said it was his desire to give the position a bit more stability by funding it for the remainder of the school year and to also eliminate taking money away from the long-term substitute’s account.
In asking for the position to be added, Tim Levesque, the district’s new technology coordinator, highlighted a number of issues the district will likely need to address over the course of the school year and next summer.
“We have extremely old technology at Houlton Elementary and Southside (schools),” he said. “They are using laptops that were manufactured in 2006, so those are eight years old. In my opinion, eight years for a computer is a long time. Four years is about the max you want to go with a piece of technology.”
Levesque added the district’s wireless network and servers were two other areas that needed to be addressed. RSU 29 presently has about 2,500 devices running on its network. All of those devices funnel through a single firewall system, which Levesque said was not an ideal way for the technology to be configured.
The board also agreed to create a new lead custodian title for the district for the rest of the school year to assist Transportation and Facilities Director Joe Schneider. The district previously had separate transportation and facilities directors, but the two positions were consolidated during the budgeting process this past summer.
A lead custodian title was needed, according to Schneider, so that one person could deal with issues whenever he was not available.
The position will result in a raise for whichever individual on staff is given the title. The amount of that raise will have to be negotiated with the union, Hammer said, but would likely be about $1.30 per hour, which is what other departments have in place.
In other agenda items, the board received its yearly audit report from David Alward of Davis, Gates and Alward. In his presentation, Alward stated the district’s year report revealed no findings or comments, which essentially means the district received a clean audit with no issues found.
The district’s undesignated fund balance has dropped dramatically in recent years. Alward said the district had roughly $597,000 in its undesignated account. In previous years has been well over $1 million, but the board has been using those funds to reduce the tax burden for four consecutive years.
“The fund balance has been used over the last few years, and obviously you can’t do that forever,” Alward said. “Essentially, you are spending more than is coming in. And that depends on a lot of factors.”
Alward said the amount that should be kept in an undesignated account is “subjective” with no set figure or percentage recommended by his company. A surplus of 8 percent would essentially be enough to cover one month’s expenses, if the district were ever in a situation where the state government failed to provide revenue payments.
“Your fund balance is essentially what you have set aside to cover shortfalls in revenues,” Alward said. “You have enough in there to conceivably get through that (shortfall).”
The board also welcomed newly elected members Sue Tortello, Susan McLaughlin and Scott White to the group and named Jim Quirk as the new vice chairman to join chairman Fred Grant in a leadership role.
The next regular meeting of the RSU 29 school board is Monday, Jan. 5, at 6 p.m. in the Houlton High School library.