Living Sky School Division has parted ways with Dave Hutchinson as Director of Education.
At their meeting Wednesday evening, the Living Sky school board voted in favour of accepting the mutual termination contract with Hutchinson.
A mutual termination contract was agreed to and takes effect immediately. Hutchinson will be on leave until his contract ends in July.
In his place, Randy Fox has been brought back from retirement to serve as interim Director of Education. A motion accepting Fox as the interim director was carried.
Both votes, during the public portion of the meeting, followed what had been a lengthy closed-door session of the Living Sky school board on Wednesday afternoon at their offices in North Battleford.
Staff at the school division were notified about the changes on Thursday morning.
In speaking to the News-Optimist, board chair Ronna Pethick thanked Hutchinson for his "dedication, the professionalism that he brought every day."
"But at the end of the day, I think we wanted different things," said Pethick.
Hutchinson's year on the job coincided with a difficult budget process with the school division forced to deal with a shortfall of roughly $6 million.
The board chair acknowledged that "we've had a very difficult year with budget and we've had to make some very difficult decisions, and our Director of Education and our Chief Financial Officer have been integral with those tough decisions as well as our staff, our senior staff, but I would like to wish Dave the very best as he goes forward and thank him for his integrity and dedication and his support of our school division."
It is expected Fox's tenure as interim director will be a brief one as the search goes on for a new director of Education.
A director search will begin fairly quickly and Pethick said advertisements will be going in the major papers. Pethick said the hope was to have a new Director of Education in place at the end of that process "by Aug. 1 -- if not, for sure Sept. 1."
