Elk Lake okays support personnel contract

BY ROBERT L. BAKER
Times-Shamrock Writer

The Elk Lake School Board approved a 3-year contract with the district’s support personnel last Wednesday night.

In a 7-0 vote with board member Eric Emmerich absent and board member Jack Sible abstaining, the board gave its okay to a contract that will see the members of the Elk Lake Educational Support Association with a 30 cents an hour pay raise over each of the next three years. The contract affected roughly 60 workers.

Superintendent Ken Cuomo called it a “very fair contract, and thanked outgoing staff member Sue Heed for her role in working out a solution.

Heed was present at the board meeting, and returned the favor to the board.

Following the board meeting, board member Arden Tewksbury said the contract did not apply, however, to support personnel in the Susquehanna County Career and Technology Center.

Also on Wednesday, the Elk Lake board approved the second to last payment to JCI for $256,646 for its work in the energy conversion across the district to natural gas.

Cuomo said the district was assured by JCI there would be no cost overruns and there would be no additional cost for JCI to provide up to 16 additional hours per month in technical assistance.

In other business, the board also entered into an easement agreement with Leatherstocking to lay its piping from the main pipeline to the school once natural gas is flowing, hopefully, around the end of the year.

In the SCCTC portion of the meeting, an interim nursing director stipend of $834 was approved for the time in September when the recently resigned Rebecca Dross was filling the position on an interim basis.

In her director’s report, SCCTC Director Alice Davis acknowledged another house was under construction.
She said the property was excavated in June, and foundation walls were being framed this week. She also noted that concrete would be poured before the end of the month and a septic system would be laid in the coming weeks.

Following board action but before the meeting was adjourned, Tewksbury asked Cuomo if there was any movement on nearly $1 million in reimbursement that the district was expecting from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania when it okayed the district’s move to expand the career and technology center a few years ago.

“We’re high on a list for getting reimbursed with a whole lot of other schools,” Cuomo said, noting he was hopeful, but not expecting that it would come any time soon.