New department will take care of Braintree schools, municipal buildings

BRAINTREE – The creation of a single department to oversee the maintenance of municipal and school buildings will become a reality. . Now comes the task of working out the details of the merger.

The school committee unanimously approved a centralized maintenance department at last week's meeting. Braintree Town Council backed the plan on Dec. 7.

The new department will be part of the Department of Public Works and have about 65 to 70 employees.

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The consolidation was proposed by Mayor Charles Kokoros as a way to improve the condition of school and municipal buildings and to save money by having tradespeople on the town payroll doing the work rather than hiring someone from outside.

"This is a great opportunity to bring this combined facilities department together and really concentrate on the schools," the mayor said.

Town workers have been performing tasks in the schools since before the start of the school year, including making repairs to the plumbing at Braintree High School.

Michael McGourty, the head of the town's facilities department, told the school committee at an earlier meeting that one of the first tasks of the new department would be a full assessment of the school department's building needs, from structural issues to building systems. This would be used to create a priority list for building repairs.

School committee Chair Lisa Fiske Heger said they will begin working out the details of the merger at the committee's next meeting.

"We all know this will be a long process," she said. "It won't happen overnight."

Under the ordinance, either the school committee or the town council can vote to dissolve the consolidation.

New director of finance and operations

In other business, the committee approved the appointment of Sara Kauffman as the school system's director of finance and operations. Kauffman, a Braintree resident, is the associate director of analytics at Milton Academy, where she has worked for nearly six years. Prior to that, she worked in the health insurance industry.

Kauffman will take over on July 1 from Edward Cronin, who is retiring after nearly eight years in the job.