The Mascenic school district has a new assistant superintendent, according to school board chair Jeff Salmonson, who confirmed the hiring at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

James Lewis, the superintendent of Winchester School District since 2012, accepted the newly created position and is scheduled to start July 1.

“He comes with a lot of experience and a lot of enthusiasm and energy,” Salmonson said.

A school committee, made up of Salmonson and fellow board member Steve Spratt, interviewed Lewis for the interim superintendent job earlier this month. That job went to Stephen Russell.

The assistant superintendent position was created to replace the director of student services job after Thomas Kelly recently announced his retirement as director, according to Russell. Kelly’s retirement comes around the time two district employees — special education coordinator Cheryl Newsham and district curriculum coach Melissa Vinal — announced their resignations. Russell said the district is planning on filling those two positions.

“They’ll be missed,” said Russell in an email.

Russell started his job June 12, replacing Ruthann Goguen, who left for a superintendent job in Webster, Massachusetts earlier this month. The district plans on restarting the superintendent search “sometime this fall,” Salmonson said.

District officials would not release salary and benefit details for Lewis, asking the Ledger-Transcript to fill out a public records request for the figures instead. That request was submitted Wednesday.

Attempts to interview Lewis by email Wednesday were unsuccessful.

Lewis, who served as a principal for three years in the Winchester School District according to his LinkedIn page, is listed as the special education contact for the district according to the state department of education.

Mascenic has been making changes to its special education guidelines, as a result of a 2009 Office of Civil Rights complaint, where the U.S. Department of Education alleged the district discriminated against students with disabilities at Boynton Middle School by not “identifying, referring and evaluating them to determine whether they are in need of special education services.”

Mascenic was contacted in March for an update on the complaint. The district agreed to update its special education guidelines — procedures under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which the district is calling its 504 manual.

“The finding was there wasn’t a general awareness, and our job was to make sure that there will be,” Russell said. “And so at the opening of school we’ll have some district-wide workshops and one of those will be focused on that manual.”

In other business, despite objections from Salmonson, the Mascenic school board voted to approve waivers for three community organizations looking to use district buildings for events.

In a 4-1 vote, the school board approved the following:

New Ipswich Parks and Recreation Youth Cheer Camp, $80

New Ipswich Parks and Recreation Museum of Science program, $193.04

Greenville Community Profile organizational meetings, $95

Salmonson, who was the lone dissenter, said these waivers are an annual discussion. Previous boards voted in favor of supporting waivers for youth activities, he said.

“Generally we have not been supportive of adult programs,” Salmonson said.

Salmonson said he was worried about setting a precedent.

“I mean it’s their school, if they want to, they should be able to use it,” school board member Tom Falter said.

Last year, the district waived $11,000 in fees, according to Beth Baker, business administrator.

“We’re now getting to where it’s a really tight budget, we’ve actually had complaints that we waived the fees,” Salmonson said.

Despite Salmonson’s objections, the waivers passed, though the discussion will likely carry on to the next school board meeting in August, when the school board will attempt to craft a policy for waiving fees.

“My business background is saying that I’m going to take $193.04 and balance it against $10,000 of negative publicity,” Spratt said. “We need a policy and honestly, I’m surprised we don’t have one.”