School official: Hard work is just beginning

April 4, 2008: The schools have already started work on hiring the 59 new employees, most of them teachers and counselors, that will be added under the Proposition 2½ override approved on Tuesday. The new staff will be used to restore school programs and expand course offerings.

By FRED HANSON

Even while the celebrations continued, school officials got down to the task of carrying out the goals of the $5.48 million school override approved by voters at Tuesday’s town election.

“The administration understands the hard work has just begun, but it’s joyful work,” School Superintendent Richard Silverman told the school committee Thursday night. “It’s a lot more fun to build things than to take them apart.”

Silverman said the system had already advertised the 59 new jobs the override would create, most of them teacher and counselor positions. Silverman said that by starting their recruiting now there will have a pool of higher-quality candidates to select from. Applications are already coming in, he said.

The system is also planning a job fair for minority candidates for next month.

On Wednesday, Silverman said meetings were being held to form committees that would screen and interview candidates for the various positions.

This year, the school system will not have to send out notices to teachers and other staff members that they may not be returning to work in the fall for budgetary reasons, Silverman said. The notices have gone out for the past three years.

Silverman said the passage of the override will mean “extensive electives and extensive high level courses” at Randolph High School.

This year, the lack of elective courses made it difficult for some students to take a full schedule of courses.

Assistant School Superintendent Jonathan Landman said the override would restore junior varsity and freshman sports as well as extracurricular activities at the high school.

Foreign language classes would return to Randolph Community Middle School, Landman said. In the elementary schools, students would have an art, music or physical education class each day and librarians would return to school libraries.

School committee members thanked the voters for backing the override and supporters who efforts paid off in the first-ever override approved by the town.

Committee Chairman Larry Azer said he was “humbled” by the overwhelming show of support for the school override, which passed by a 677-vote margin.

He also offered an apology to those who may have been offended by his victory-cigar celebration on election night.

“If this was the National Football League, I would have been flagged 15 yards for excessive celebration,” he said.

He added that he never lit the cigar.

Precinct 5 town meeting member Judith Gangel gave the committee a bottle of champagne that had been in her refrigerator since the first override attempt was defeated nearly five years ago.