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June 15, 2009

Brochu's contract extended through 2012

Rachel Brown

Superintendent Katie Brochu will serve Whitfield County Schools through 2012 under a contract extension the board approved unanimously during a called meeting on Monday.

Vice chairman Tim Trew said the terms of the contract, and her base salary of $180,000 a year, will stay the same as when the contract was extended in 2007. The contract includes $750 a month for automobile expenses.

Brochu has been superintendent since 2005. Her current contract was set to expire in 2010, but board members said her performance warrants extending it two more years.

“We’re getting a whole lot more out of a whole lot less since we hired you,” Trew said, referring to the fact that Whitfield’s spending per pupil has fallen from 88th highest in the state to 162nd highest out of 180 school districts.

Board member Thomas Barton complimented Brochu on keeping students and teachers engaged and happy about learning.

“I would tell you if I thought otherwise,” he said.

Brochu said she owes much of her success to her staff and appreciates the board’s approval.

Brochu came to Whitfield County from York School District One in York, S.C., where she was superintendent from 2001 to 2005. She began her career in education in 1983 as a physical education teacher.

Brochu’s first superintendent’s position was from 1994 to 2001 at Sumter County Schools in Americus, where she had worked since 1989. The Georgia School Superintendents Association named her Superintendent of the Year in 1997, and she was one of four finalists in the national Superintendent of the Year race.

Also at the meeting, the board approved spending an additional $500,000 on the new high school. Some $156,000 will be used for roof pavers and $65,000 for an aluminum awning to create 5,400 square feet of outdoor classroom space on the second floor of the building. Another $170,000 will go toward placing wood ceilings in the lobby, media center and cafeteria.

“In the absence of that, you would essentially have exposed ceiling,” said Rick Ott, senior executive vice president for construction management firm M.B. Kahn Construction Co. Inc.

The school off Crow Road near Prater’s Mill is set to open in 2011.

Ott said the school system has saved more than $16 million off the original budget of $96 million for the new high school, Cedar Ridge Elementary School and several smaller construction projects.

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