New Broome-Tioga BOCES Superintendent on the Job

The new head of Broome Tioga BOCES is getting settled in.  New District Superintendent Rebecca Stone is get acquainted with staff this week after being appointed to the job by the BOCES Board of Education in a unanimous vote last Thursday, July 7.

Stone previously was the Superintendent of Schools in the Marathon district for over ten years.

The educator has two decades of experience under her belt.  Stone has been a teacher of math and science in Salt Lake City, Utah as well as in Winston-Salem North Carolina.  She was an elementary school principal in South Jefferson School District.

There are 15 local school districts in the Broome Tioga BOCES system.

The 37 BOCES systems in New York State work with local school districts and the New York State Department of Education.

There have been staffing challenges in school districts, not only in New York State, but around the country for several years.  The problem in recruiting and maintaining educators has been complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic when many teachers stepped away from the profession as learning turned to online and remote technologies.

Get our free mobile app

Many Southern Tier school districts have been struggling to fill full time and substitute teaching positions and New York State has been taking steps to make it more attractive for retired teachers to return in part-time and substitute teaching positions.  Retired state workers are prohibited from taking other state jobs that pay over a certain cap as a way to prevent double-dipping or civil workers drawing a regular pay while still collecting their full pension benefits.

Stone says the staffing issue is one of the biggest challenges she sees facing local school districts along with ongoing COVID protocols and precautions as new variants of the coronavirus continue to emerge.

School starts September 8.