School heads agree to new deal

The six administrators in the Granville School District will receive a 6.5 percent pay increase over the next three years, but will pay more of their insurance costs and will lose some stipends as a result of a contract approved by the Board of Education Monday night.

Diane Dumas, president of the Granville Administrators’ Association and principal at Mary J. Tanner School, said she was pleased with the agreement.

“It was very amicable. It was really a collaboration,” Dumas said Tuesday. “We were all on the same page. We wanted to be responsible, get it done and do the best for everyone. We wanted to do the right thing for the community.”

Superintendent Mark Bessen  agreed: “There was give and take on both sides. “It was very fair considering the fiscal environment and the fact that we value our employees.”

Besides Dumas, the union includes James Donnelly, the principal of Granville High School, and his assistant principal, Dan Poucher, as well as the new elementary principal, Jane O’Shea, new director of special education, Camille Harrison, and director of technology, Diane Quick.

The contract, which calls for an immediate raise of 2 percent, followed by another 2 percent next year and 2.5 percent in the final year, will see the administrators pay 5 percent more of their health insurance.

Bessen said in the past when additional tasks came down from the state Department of Education, stipends were added to the specific administrators’ salaries. Under the new contract, these are rolled into salaries.

According to documentation provided by business manager Cathy Somich, the administrators’ salaries for 2012-13 are: Donnelly, $107,920; Dumas, $97,763; O’Shea, $84,660; Poucher, $83,522; and Quick, $75,748. Harrison’s salary was not immediately provided.

The contract between the school district and the teachers’ union, which expired at the end of June, remains unsettled. Bessen said he had no comment, and union president Christine Cook has declined to comment in the past.