The Aromas-San Juan Unified School District lost its business manager to a higher-paying position and currently has an interim employee in the job, though officials hope to have a replacement ready for trustee approval by the board meeting in early October, according to a district employee.
“That would be good,” said Superintendent Ruben Zepeda. “It’s never fun losing a business manager.”
Cheryl Robbins, the former business manager, had her last day in the district Sept. 10 after about a year and a half in the job, the superintendent said. She had been making $91,674 in regular pay and a total of $123,597 in total pay and benefits, according to transparentcalifornia.com, a website that makes the salaries of employees paid with taxpayer money available to the public.
“Cheryl ended up getting a job that pays quite a bit more than what we’re paying her right now,” Zepeda said.
After Robbins resigned, the district posted a job flyer to the EdCal JobBoard and edjoin.org, then hired an interim business manager, the superintendent said.
The district will conduct interviews for the position next week and hopes to bring a candidate to the board for approval by the regularly scheduled Oct. 14 meeting, Zepeda explained.
The district has been hit hard by the statewide teacher shortage, and so the superintendent is currently teaching classes from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at San Juan School while the site tries to fill two open teaching positions.
“With me doing that, that means everybody else has to pick up a little more work, too,” he said. “So everybody is working a little harder right now.”
San Juan School also has an interim principal, Taffra Mayo, at the site after the former leader, Kyle Griffith, left to become the principal of a school about a mile from his home shortly before school started.
“School districts always say things like ‘students come first.’ Well, in our case we demonstrate that in some ways by putting me in the classroom to work with students because we’re not going to take anyone that shows up in the job just because we need somebody,” he said.
