Kostan fills two empty administrative positions

LYNN – Superintendent Nicholas Kostan has added two new members to his curriculum team this week, filling empty positions with longtime district employees.Kostan filled two of four open positions with two veteran educators, former Lynn Classical science department head John Richardson and former curriculum and instruction teacher Shirley Albert.Richardson will take over for the retired David Linehan as assistant director of science curriculum, while Albert will fill Richard McGuinness’ former role of assistant director of math curriculum. McGuinness also retired this summer.”Both hires are Lynn residents and I think that both are solid choices to fill our needs,” Kostan said Tuesday. “I think (the transition to the new positions) will go pretty smoothly. Both are very knowledgeable and very easy to work with, I am looking forward to working with both of them throughout the school year.”Richardson has worked in the Lynn Public Schools for 34 years, the majority of which has been spent as a physics teacher at Lynn English and later Lynn Classical High. He has served as science department head at Classical for the past three years.”John has done an outstanding job over the years and he is very respected by his peers,” said Kostan. “He has a lot of knowledge in the sciences. This is a tough job filling the shoes of Dave Linehan, but we have a lot of confidence John can get it done.”Albert is a 10-year veteran of the Lynn Public Schools and has spent the last several years as a curriculum and instruction teacher for the district. Much of her expertise comes at the elementary school level, where there has been an increased focus on improving math scores on the MCAS test.The new hires are part of a comprehensive overhaul of the curriculum team, all of which has been brought on by retirement.Earlier this summer Kostan selected Susan Rowe to replace Joanne Roy as executive director of curriculum and instruction, the top position in the curriculum department.Kostan has been reviewing resumes throughout the summer to try and fill the four vacant positions below Rowe.In addition to Roy, Linehan and McGuinness, assistant director of English/language arts curriculum Janice Koskey and director of technology integration Sharon Tucker also retired this summer.With those retirements brought an opportunity for Kostan to restructure the team a bit, combining Koskey’s former position with that of Mary Anne Sharpe, who is the assistant director of reading curriculum. With Sharpe now in charge of both reading and English/language arts, it freed up money and space to add an assistant director of health curriculum, a position that was cut from the budget two years ago.Increases in the state’s health curriculum requirements have dictated a need for the position once again, so Kostan took the recent retirements as an opportunity to fill that slot and move other administrators to new posts.Kostan says he is hoping to fill the health and technology positions within the next few weeks.