Pair of administrators leaving Marblehead School Dept.

MARBLEHEAD – Two of the key administration players in the School Department’s school renovation and construction plans are leaving town this spring for new jobs.School Business Manager David Keniston confirmed that he will leave Marblehead June 30 to become the school business manager in Andover. His new job is a seven-minute commute from his Tewksbury home and he will earn $115,000 a year, a $12,000 raise from his Marblehead salary.School Facilities Director David Dunkley will leave Marblehead Friday for Woburn, where the school facilities director post will pay him $92,000 a year. He earned $77,000 in Marblehead with the use of a town car. Dunkley, who lives in Salem, N.H., is also choosing a shorter commute.Both men are leaving on what appear to be good terms.”The commute was the big issue,” Dunkley said. “Marblehead is a great place to work and I wasn’t looking, I just arrived 10 minutes early for an occupational therapy visit and the only thing to read was the Help Wanted section in a newspaper, and the Woburn ad just jumped out at me.”I believe in fate,” he added.As for advising the committees in charge of the Village, Glover and Gerry schools projects, Dunkley said he would be available any time they call.Keniston said he plans to return to Marblehead periodically to advise his successor. “There’s so much here that’s unwritten,” he said. He has 14 weeks left before the fiscal year ends and he makes the transfer.Keniston echoed Dunkley’s thoughts about how great Marblehead is.He especially offered praise for the town’s wonderful, hard-working School Committee people. They’re like unpaid consultants, and thanks to the taxpayers who support what they’re doing, he said.Superintendent of Schools Paul Dulac, who has already begun interviewing possible successors to both men, said, “We will miss him (Dunkley) greatly. I’ve seen how he plowed the way for us as a liaison with other town departments to get things done for the schools, borrowing trucks and equipment.”