Money is found, contracts approved by Board of Ed

SALISBURY — The Board of Education’s final accounting for the 2008-09 school year turned up an extra $45,000, and the board ratified a new contract with Salisbury Central School teachers for 2010-13 during the regular November meeting Monday, Nov. 30.

Chairman Roger Rawlings said that two lines in the 2008-09 budget — the contract with the All-Star bus company, and the teachers’ health insurance line — were found by town comptroller Joe Cleaveland to have surpluses.

Rawlings said the bus company mixup was easily explained — a question of reimbursements for fuel — but the health insurance overage (almost $35,000) was at least partially due to the actions of former board clerk Lori Tompkins.

Tompkins was charged with stealing $110,000 from the Board of Education and Salisbury Central School accounts between March 2005 and December 2008. She entered a plea of no contest to charges of first-degree larceny on Oct. 20 and will be sentenced Jan. 22.

“Let me put it this way,� Rawlings said. “The teachers’ health insurance line is a place where the former board clerk put some money.�

The board voted to transfer the extra funds to the capital account, which means the 2009-10 capital balance is about $270,000.

The new contract with the Salisbury Central School Faculty Association adds an extra 15 minutes per school day — from six hours 25 minutes to six hours 40 minutes. (This adds up to 45 hours per school year.)

Rawlings said that with this new 15 minutes (combined with an extra 10 minutes added in 2004), the middle school gets an extra period in the schedule. He suggested the possibility of using the extra class time for world language instruction.

Rawlings said in a subsequent phone interview that all the teachers will receive a 1.75-percent raise in the first year. In the next two years the budget’s salary line increases  2.5 percent in year two and 3 percent in the final year. The teachers decided internally how that money would be distributed.

The board also negotiated significant cost savings — as much as $45,000 — in the prescription drug section of the teachers’ health-care plan.

Rawlings said he was “very proud� of the work done by the board and the teachers’ union.

Board officers were elected at the start of the meeting. Roger Rawlings returns as chairman, as do Jennifer Weigel as vice chairman and Brian Bartram as treasurer. The board also reappointed Paul Henrici as the alternate to the Region One Board of Education, and kept Rawlings as the board’s representative to the  Recreation Commission.

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