As school has started, students may have seen old faces in different classrooms. Some teachers resigned, others retired and some have been newly appointed.
As for retirements and teachers who resigned, Mr. Bert Pickard retired after about 38 years as the high school technical education teacher. One of the high school history teachers, Ms. Katherine Gigl, has moved back to New Jersey, her home state, after three years of teaching in Freedom. Ms. Danielle Barr also resigned from her post of eight years as a special education teacher at the high school.
Mr. Jeffrey Griffith, who taught special education and history classes last year, has become a full time high school social studies teacher to fill the post that Gigl left behind.
During the 10 years Mrs. Carole Hartman has worked in the Freedom Area School District, she moved around quite a bit. After spending four years at the high school and three at the middle school before most recently moving into the high school again for three years, she is now moving back to the middle school once again. Hartman has worked as a literary aid, English teacher, librarian and tutor.
This year, Hartman is filling Mrs. Natalie Miles post as the seventh-grade English teacher down at the middle school. Mr. Brad Baldwin has been appointed to fill her English teaching post in the high school.
Mrs. Blaire Lasko’s post as one of our high school’s English teachers was momentarily changed over the summer, but after staff resignations and further discussion by the administration, Lasko kept her position as the English 10 and Honors English 10 teacher with the addition of librarian duties. Baldwin will be covering librarian duties throughout the day since his classroom is in the library, and Lasko will be in the library during AAP.
Mr. Keith Kovalic, band and chorus director at the high school, has dropped DTV, FHS’s morning announcement broadcast, from his schedule and added middle school music classes, due to a furloughed part-time music teaching post. Mr. Aaron Fitzpatrick will be taking over the DTV class in place of Kovalic.
There are many changes in the special education department as well. Mr. George Miklas has taken over teaching responsibilities of the home repair that Pickard was responsible for in the past. Ms. Cara Seymour and Ms. Yvonne Abakah have been appointed as full-time and part-time teachers, respectively, in the high school’s special education department.
As with all staff changes, students will soon become accustomed to the new positions and staff members. High School Principal William Deal will miss the staff members that have moved on from Freedom, but “[wishes] them all the best and [knows] they will do great things where they are.”
“All in all, I think the moves were good for all those involved,” Deal said.
A few new special education aids are expected to come soon.