It’s the district’s biggest hiring year ever, according to Superintendent George Rafferty.
When it comes to looking for the right hire at the Tabernacle School District, Rafferty will keep looking until he finds the right fit.
“When you’re small, everyone counts. You have to get it right,” Rafferty said. “We have high standards.”
Rafferty was looking for someone to meet the district’s expectation.
“Our candidates have to be the right fit for us and be on board with our curriculum,” he said.
Rafferty was on a journey as long as nine months for his business administrator, Noreen Boston, and had to search for his iSTEM teacher, Heather Petersack.
“We had to be thorough, and move quick looking for Petersack,” Rafferty said. “There are five or six districts looking at the iSTEM graduates.”
Petersack was hired as a middle school iSTEM teacher, for grades five through eight. She will be integrating academic disciplines, science, technology, engineering and math through design challenges or an engineering design process.
Petersack will take what the students learn at grade level in math and science and show them how to apply it to the real world through design challenges or an engineering design process.
Petersack initially majored in secondary education and mathematics but changed her major to elementary education in iSTEM.
“I was hoping to get a job with my iSTEM degree. It is so new, I didn’t know if schools would have that type of position yet,” she said. “iSTEM is such a new thing, and the Tabernacle School District is so much ahead of the ball.”
Rafferty posted the position of business administrator initially in August 2012 and filled it with an interim from October 2012 through June 2013. Boston’s application was approved in May, and she came on board in July.
Lisa Rossi was hired as the guidance counselor for the Kenneth R. Olson Middle School. This is her first full-time guidance counselor position.
“I look forward to being able to help students socially and emotionally, and letting students learn from each other,” Rossi said. “I want to make sure that students are supported by incorporating more career and life exploratory opportunities to the students so they are prepped for Seneca High School and beyond.”
Allie Lewis, previously a fifth-grade teacher with the Tabernacle School District, will now be teaching kindergarten.
“Kindergarten has always been the grade I have wanted,” said Lewis, who did her student teaching in a kindergarten classroom. “You really get to see the growth and see how the students learn and read.”
Alyssa Friedrich, a new hire to the Tabernacle School District, will be a kindergarten inclusion teacher. Friedrich is very excited to get her own classroom, as she was working as a long-term substitute.
“Tabernacle is awesome. Everyone is so welcoming,” Friedrich said. She is looking forward to making the best of her year and teaching reading, writing and the love of learning.
Ruth Stitt, a part-time music teacher addition to the Tabernacle School District, will be working with chorus and drama.
Stitt plays the flute and the piano, and is familiar with all the instruments.
“I plan to get the students involved as much as possible,” she said. “We will be singing by the fall.”
She plans to be putting productions on in the spring.
