By: Eddy Gifford, Publisher

The Dade County Board of Education held its regular monthly meeting Monday night and what started out to be a quick meeting turned into a marathon.

The regular business meeting took less than 20 minutes but the Board went into executive session for personnel and the Superintendent’s annual evaluation. The executive session lasted three and a half hours.

The first order of business was to elect a new vice-chairman to replace Mutt Massengale who resigned a couple of weeks ago.

The Board elected Jeff Forester vice-chair on a unanimous vote.

On the consent agenda the Board quickly approved the Title I Budget, the class size waiver and awarded a fuel bid to Jat Oil at a cost of $3.523 for 7,200 gallons of diesel.

During his report Superin-tendent Shawn Tobin brought the Board up to date on legislative topics pointing out that one of the pending bills would allow the sales tax on fuels to be waived for schools.

Superintendent Tobin also announced that since school will be out next week for Spring Break teachers will be paid on Friday, March 22.

The school web page now includes an Alumni Webpage that has information about Dade High School, Northwest Georgia High School, Davis High School and students who attended schools in Dade County.

Superintendent Tobin also pointed out that several students from Dade High School did very well in competition recently.

Jacob Schauer, Brandon Middlebrooks and Elizabeth Reid participated in the Future Business Leaders of America competition and earned first place. They will now compete in California on the national level. Cody Henderson took third place in Help Desk, and first place in Electronic Career Portfolio and also received a $500 scholarship. Family and Consumer Science Students Paige Porter, Emily Tinker and Shelby Wallin took silver in Advocacy. In Chapter Service Project Display Makayla Bowman, Kristina Doyle and Brooklyn Poston took second and in Life Event Planning Abbey Heath and Alexis West took gold.

The Board then headed into their marathon executive session.

Superintendent Tobin made the following personnel recommendations: resignations (effective at the end of the school year) Sarah Williams, bookkeeper at Dade High; Garry Friske, paraprofessional and bus driver; Sandra Bradford, custodian at Dade Elementary; Lisa Haynes, teacher Dade Elementary and Carol Hopper, guidance counselor at Dade Middle School.

The Board also voted to hire Aaron Stanton as guidance counselor at Dade Middle for the 2013-14 school year.