FAIRMONT – It didn’t take long for George Boyles to hone the edge during Friday’s special session of the Marion County Board of Education.
“We need to move on,” the BOE president said.
“We called this meeting and it’s basically to talk about the process we’re putting in place for a new superintendent.”
Friday’s special meeting came in response of Monday’s regular one, when the board was deadlocked on the matter of the contract of current superintendent Donna Heston.
Boyles during that meeting wanted to offer a three-year, $154,000 contract to Heston – and Tom Dragich agreed.
They were outvoted, though, by their fellow members Kevin Rogers, Donna Costello and the Rev. James Saunders.
When the board president came back with a two-year offer at that same salary, the vote again fell on that same line – as did Boyles’ third counter, for a one-year contract.
Monday’s motion by Costello to let the contract expire was stymied essentially by a tie: with Costello and Rogers voting yea and Boyles and Dragich saying nay.
Saunders abstained from that vote.
An executive session, meanwhile, took up the bulk of Friday’s meeting, as the board decided it would collectively move forward in the search for Heston’s replacement.
Heston, who was hired in 2021 at the height of the pandemic, will work out her contract through June 30.
“I’m disappointed,” Boyles said Friday, “but that’s what the other board members wanted, so that’s what we have to do.”
The board will again meet in special session this coming Wednesday to begin setting the particulars of an official search – which Boyles said he’d like to keep in-state, as opposed to going national.
Heston said while she was “surprised” she didn’t get a renewed contract, she’s still the superintendent for now.
And she’ll still keep working, she said, on behalf of Marion County Schools.
“We have a lot of projects I want to see through,” she said.
Many of them are centered on security.
Under her watch, the district is installing Safe Schools entrances on 19 of its aging buildings. The superintendent is also anxious to see how students do on state-wide testing this spring, she said.
Meanwhile, she praised students, teachers and staffers and said she was “honored” for a chance five years ago to serve in the place where she grew up and went to school.
“I’m an ‘East Side’ girl,” said Heston, who began her career teaching Advanced Placement English. “I have a real passion for this place. I’ll be interested to see what direction the county takes on July 1.”
