By Tom Gilchrist
For The Advertiser
CASS CITY — Cass City Public Schools Superintendent Jeff Hartel — accused at a Monday night Board of Education meeting of not “taking a hit” when it comes to budget cuts — agreed to take on secretarial duties to save money.
Hartel said he’ll do the work of secretary Ets TerBush, one of three employees resigning from the superintendent’s office in the coming weeks. TerBush receives an annual salary of about $47,500.
“I’ll absorb what Ets was doing as part of my daily work, and there might be another administrator helping,” Hartel said. “There are just a series of reports that we’ll have to figure out how to do. Hopefully Ets will teach me. If the phone rings, I’ll pick it up. If there’s nobody there to answer, we have an automated phone system.”
Due to declining enrollment and rising costs, Cass City must trim anywhere from $300,000 to $480,000 from its budget before the start of the new fiscal year July 1, according to estimates from Hartel and Mike Klosowski, Cass City’s part-time chief financial officer who will resign at the end of June. The amount will vary depending on how much of an increase
Cass City receives in state aid per pupil.
Payroll bookkeeper Linda Bennett also will resign from her job in the coming weeks.
With the upcoming loss of three employees in his office, Hartel on Monday initially proposed to hire a full-time secretary for his office at $15.29 per hour, a full-time employee doing the duties of a chief financial officer and bookkeeper for a total cost of about $60,000, and contracting with the Tuscola Intermediate School District to do payroll services for $22,000 per year.
Board member Dan Manwell was skeptical.
“I guess, Jeff, for me, it looks like your office isn’t the one taking a hit,” Manwell said. “You know, when you say you’re all ‘taking a hit on this,’ you have two full-time people there … and a part-time person (through the Intermediate School District), so you’re not taking a hit.”
Hartel then volunteered to learn to do payroll services from Bennett, but switched gears later in the meeting, proposing to contract with the Intermediate School District for payroll, hire a full-time chief financial officer/bookkeeper, and do secretarial duties himself.
Several board members agreed verbally with that proposal though the board didn’t vote on it. Hartel said after the meeting that such a plan would save roughly $50,000 next fiscal year.
In addition to working as superintendent, Hartel said “I am transportation director, plus I’m going to be my secretary, too.”
Hartel said he plans to interview three candidates for the chief financial officer/bookkeeper position in the coming days. At a board meeting earlier in June, Vice President Alice Zaleski asked Hartel to check with intermediate school districts to determine if Cass City could contract with them for services of a chief financial officer.
On Monday, Hartel reported that contracting with an intermediate school district for a chief financial officer “cannot happen — it’s either too expensive, or there are no people there.”
Zaleski supported Hartel’s plan to contract with the Tuscola Intermediate School District for payroll services.
“Jeff has come to us with some proposals that are not way out of line, and are still a savings in the budget,” Zaleski said.
Hartel reported Monday that Cass City Public Schools will keep Nick Moyer as Title I director in the new school year. Moyer’s position had been proposed for elimination at a savings of about $65,000, but school leaders will use federal money instead of money from Cass City’s general fund to pay Moyer, according to Hartel.
Also on Monday, Hartel proposed renewing the two-year contracts of school administrators Chad Daniels, Don Markel and Aaron Fernald. Hartel reported that each of those administrators was rated as “effective” in their latest evaluations.
Board member Janie Meeker, however, recommended reducing the length of the trio’s contracts from two years to one, and cutting the length of Hartel’s contract from three years to two years. Meeker passed out copies of administrators’ contracts to her other board members.
The board tabled discussion on the length of the contracts until the board’s next meeting.