SCHOOL BOARD UPDATE
By: John Tredrea
As the Hopewell Valley Regional School District gets ready for classes to resume in a few weeks, the school board voted unanimously Monday night in favor of a series of personnel actions.
All came to the board with the recommendation of superintendent of schools Dr. Robert Sopko and the board’s Personnel Committee.
Appointed K-12 special education supervisor for 2001-2002 was Isabelle Richards. The appointment, at a salary of $73,119, is contingent on ratification of the district’s contract with its administrators and supervisors.
Ms. Richard’s has been the social worker on Central High School’s child study team since 1999. She has a master’s in social work from Rutgers and a master’s in educational administration from Rider. In a memo to the school board, Dr. Sopko said Ms. Richards "has extensive experience with supervising staff, including her private practice that specialized in family therapy. Ms. Richards is a certified drug and alcohol counselor and a licensed family therapist. She is also fluent in Spanish."
Appointed technology trainer at Central High School for 2001-2002, at an annual salary of $41,000, was Tracy Norris. She has a bachelor’s in English from Georgetown and eight years experience with software customer service, project management, and training in Windows, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access and many other special programs.
Dr. Sopko said she also has "extensive experience in creating training and software manuals for both systems and software as well as facilitation and presentation skills."
Appointed as a full-time special education teacher, at an annual salary of $39,400, was Melissa Quattrone, who will divide her time evenly between Hopewell Elementary and Timberlane Middle School. Ms. Quattrone has a bachelor’s degree in education from West Chester University and a master’s in learning disabilities from Columbia.
Also at Monday night’s meeting, the board accepted the resignations of Central High School mathematics teacher Melissa Lundgaard, effective Sept. 24, and Hopewell Elementary learning disabilities consultant Jackie Roposh, effective Aug. 7.