By Curt Peterson
Windsor Central Unified Union School District superintendent Sherry Sousa announced five new hires/position changes at the May 3 board meeting. Engagements begin officially July 1.
The equity and educational support team coordinator position, reporting to director of instructional support services Gina Rocque, will be filled by Amanda Rank, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Boston College, and specialized in education administration and leadership pre-K through grade 12 at the University of South Dakota.
Rank has worked with Indigenous students, with students needing varying degrees of special education support, and in training undergraduate students in diagnostic teaching.
She has served as elementary special educator at Windsor Central Supervisory Union since July 2019.
The equity and educational support team coordinator will oversee, and liaison with Gina Rocque regarding the education support team, focusing on equity and racial justice. Rank will also pursue related grant funding.
Two new special education professionals will also report to Rocque next year — Brooke Baker and Matthew Velky.
Ms. Baker, a graduate of South Burlington High School, expects to earn her bachelor’s degree in elementary education and special education this month. She also studied at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
Baker has experience teaching elementary grade level academics, and physical education, in settings where special needs have been evident.
Velky holds a master’s degree in education from Cambridge College in Massachusetts, with a focus on moderate disabilities. His bachelor’s in education degree is from the SUNY Fredonia (New York).
For five years he’s been serving as special education inclusion teacher at Benjamin Franklin Classical Charter Public School in Franklin, Massachusetts.
Velky has extensive experience teaching students who require learning support in school, including those with autism.
Managing the district during the Covid pandemic has been challenging, and will continue to demand attention for some time to come. Patty Kelly has been hired as data-driven recovery coordinator, a post-pandemic position reporting to curriculum coordinator Jen Stainton.
Kelly will coordinate pandemic recovery efforts among the district campuses responding to state requirements, managing activities of the district recovery team, liaising with the state-level recovery folks, and communicating progress to the district’s stakeholders, all using data gathering and organization, and focusing on “socioeconomic functioning, mental health and well-being; student engagement; and academic achievement and success,” according to the resort’s press release, Friday, May 14.
Currently working as math coach in the Springfield school district, Kelly has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Bishop’s University in Quebec, master’s degrees in science from SUNY Potsdam (New York) and in education from UVM, graduate coursework at the University of Phoenix (Arizona), and is working on a doctor in Education at the University of New Hampshire.
A Canadian citizen with permanent residency status in the U.S., she has taught and coached elementary students in Windsor and Springfield, Vermont for about 10 years.
James Fenn will be taking over as director of finance and operations in July, bringing to the job, “More than 30 years’ successful experience providing fiscal, strategic and operations leadership in uniquely challenging situations,” according to his resume.
Fenn is currently chief financial officer for School Administrative Unit 60 in New Hampshire, which includes the Fall Mountain Regional School District, which has a $30 million annual budget that he oversees.
