Marblehead schools name new food service director

MARBLEHEAD – The Marblehead schools have a new food service director – and the interim high school principal is on board.Tara Hatala, who will begin her duties Aug. 24, is a licensed nutritionist and former director of nutrition at the Boston Food Bank. She has a Master’s degree in nutrition and has also taught in the field. Her salary will be $63,000.School Business Manager Jonathan Goldfield led the search, since the food service director reports to him. “We had quite a lot of qualified candidates,” he said.School Committee members are hoping that Hatala can find new sources of revenue for the program, which ran at a $67,000 loss in 2008-2009 and has had budget shortfalls in the past seven years. Committee members voted to transfer an additional $35,000 into the food services account as a cushion against next year’s anticipated deficit.Hatala will take the place of Phil Padulsky. Padulsky’s contract expires Aug. 31. He is currently stocking inventory for the 2009-2010 year and overseeing maintenance and is due to begin using vacation time in August.Goldfield said the decision to “change focus” came at the urging of the School Committee. Committee member Dick Nohelty, now the committee chair, expressed disappointment last spring when he saw that Padulsky was offering the Recreation and Park Department fresh fruit and vegetables in a box lunch for the summer playground program, something Nohelty said the food service program did not offer as part of regular school lunches.The committee later considered outsourcing school lunches and committee members planned surprise field trips to elementary school cafeterias to check out the school lunch program first-hand.School Committee members met the interim principal of Marblehead High, Sue M. Gee, at their retreat. She started the first week of July, taking the place of John Ziergiebel, who left June 30 to undergo treatment for cancer.Gee told the committee she felt as if she had come “full circle” in accepting the interim principalship. “It’s all part of changing the world, one student at a time,” she said.She served as principal and a director of vocational education in Burlington, Vt., principal of Arlington Memorial High, also located in Vermont, and principal of O’Malley Middle School in Gloucester. The Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District in California brought her in to work with three high school principals in that district to evaluate all the systems in those high schools.After the introduction, she said, “I have an opportunity to be of assistance. I’ll see what I can do to sustain the excellent programs at Marblehead High.”