North Putnam fills positions, lowers hours on non-certified employees

At the North Putnam School Board meeting on Thursday the board approved the hire of two new positions, a new graphic design teacher and the new high school head basketball coach. The board also made the decision to lower non-certified employees to 29 hours for the 2013-2014 school year.

The new North Putnam High School basketball head coach will be Lukas Haworth. Haworth comes to the high school after being head coach for the junior varsity team at New Castle.

Haworth commented that he was very excited to become head coach and looks forward to the opportunity. He also has plans for the future of the Cougars.

"(I) Plan on working on two things," Haworth commented, "One is to develop a winning attitude for the team and developing fundamental skills to be successful."

Haworth expressed his appreciation for the opportunity to coach to the administration and to the school board.

Amanda Kramer was also hired on as the new graphic design and art teacher at the high school and the middle school.

Kramer comes from Logansport were she has spent the past nine years teaching both graphic design and photography to students.

"I have a history of developing programs for schools." Kramer commented.

Kramer will be developing the graphic design program for North Putnam, the class will be offered for 7th-12th graders with high school students having the chance to earn duel credit for the class.

Kramer also has plans for the future of her program as well and hopes to start a photography club in the future and maybe start adult programs to help teach them design as well as photography.

Along with filling these two positions, the school board had to make a decision on what to do on the subject of non-certified workers and the Affordable Care Act. The board decided to cut hours of non-certified staff to 29 hours a week.

The decision was not an easy one made by the board, all board members present expressed their regrets and desire not to have to make this decision.

"The government has put us in a situation and we have a probation period," North Putnam Superintendent Dan Noel said. "We (the corporation) need to move in this direction."

The decision to cut the hours of non-certified staff comes for the government's decision on the affordable health care act, which stipulates that all employees who work over 30 hour weeks must have access to affordable health insurance. All who do not comply with this will be subjected to penalties.

The penalties and the insurance were both something that would put a hardship onto the corporation.

More information on these decisions will be available in upcoming issues of the Banner Graphic.