By Katrina Grant
The Tabernacle Board of Education held their last meeting of the school year Monday and went over many agenda items to close the school year out.
The meeting began with various reports from individual committees, including the Ad Hoc Committee, which is dealing with the solar panel project. The committee met on May 18 and saw a few new presentations for the project from some local vendors, but nothing new has happened. The committee reported that the state is recommending an energy audit that would be of no cost to the school, by the Burlington County Bridge Association. The board has to vote on the audit.
The meeting continued with Superintendent George Rafferty conducting many special presentations. The first presentations were for three teachers that are retiring this year. Ann Franzen, who was a third-grade teacher, Claire Hamilton, a reading specialist for kindergarten through fourth-grade and Patricia Pricskett who taught basic skills for kindergarten through fourth-grade were all recognized.
“It is these groups of people that make Tabernacle school district so special,” Rafferty said.
“They are always there for the students,” Dr. Gerald Paterson, principal of Tabernacle Elementary School said. “The one thing I ask them is what they will miss the most and they say the children. They are not only colleagues, they are friends.”
The board also recognized the T2 Parent Volunteers and the PTA for the contribution of the stage curtains.
“The time we take, the brief moments to recognize people in Tabernacle are really important,” Rafferty said. “The parents are partners in Tabernacle, they understand that is important.”
“We really do have the best students, teachers and parents in the whole wide world,” Paterson said. “All three work together and we have a really great family.”
The board was also recognized for becoming certified. Mary Ann Friedman from the NJSBA presented the board with a plaque.
“Board certification happens when the school board goes through 18 credit hours in addition to the mandatory training that they receive,” Friedman said. “The training is in a variety of areas. Usually the board and I would get together one or two hours on a day and do the training. Seven out of nine members had to be present for the hours to count.”
The Board of Education were the first people I met when I walked through these doors,” Rafferty said. “They are what brought me here and me want to jump on board and be your superintendent.”
The meeting closed with the board passing several agenda items pertaining to staffing, programs and several other matters that pertained to the school district. One agenda item the board wanted to speak on was the approval of the labor contract for Chad Fires, Business Administrator and Board Secretary. The board pointed out there was a $10,000 increase in Fires’ salary. Board President Douglas Hess said that the state had taken $330,000 from the district in the prior year because of accounting errors and that Fires has been active in assuring that that mistakes that cost the district money don’t happen again. Hess said that they wanted to give Fires a salary that would keep him in the district doing the work he has been doing and that they took a look at other districts and his pay was comparable.
The agenda items the board discussed in executive session were passed. Those items were hiring a full time school psychologist, the shared services agreement with the Southampton Board of Education and the Tabernacle Board of Education for Curriculum and Special Services Administrators’ positions, Abbie Dimenna as a shared services Supervisor of Special Education, the labor agreement with the Principals and Supervisor’s Association and the labor contracts for employees Dawn McIntyre, Mia Ditta, Betty Berger and Heather Van Mater.
