District Hires Goedheer: Veteran Business Manager Joins Hartland-Lakeside

By Amy Hetzner, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Feb. 22–HARTLAND — The Hartland-Lakeside School District has hired its fourth business manager in a year, snapping up a school finance veteran who recently retired from the New Berlin School District.

Tony Goedheer started in the part-time position last week, taking over a business office that lost its full-time manager in July and has gone through two interim leaders in the last year.

“We were looking for someone who would come in and stay with us, make this work,” said Hartland-Lakeside Superintendent Glenn Schilling, who worked with Goedheer when he was a principal in the New Berlin district. “Tony just had all the experience and skills and expertise.”

Goedheer retired in December after 16 years with the New Berlin School District, where he served as director of business operations and auxiliary services. Before that, he spent 10 years working for the Waukesha School District.

Goedheer said the part-time position at Hartland-Lakeside will help keep him busy.

“I was retired and just looking for something part-time and I still wanted to keep in touch,” he said. “I didn’t want to look for anything more than half-time.”

He will be paid $49,000 annually, based on a 15-hour workweek.

For those periods when Goedheer needs to work more than 15 hours, he will be paid extra on an hourly basis, Schilling said.

Goedheer will not receive fringe benefits.

Hartland-Lakeside’s newest business manager will be expected to shepherd a department where other staff members have taken on payroll and budget duties once left to a full-time administrator.

The School Board decided after former business manager Pete Balzer’s retirement in July 2007 to restructure the position into a part-time post to help save administrative costs.

A part-time business manager was hired during Balzer’s last months in office to help build a district budget, while Balzer took unused vacation time, and provide some checks and balances for a fiscal year-end audit, Schilling said.

He was followed by an interim business manager, a retired administrator from Lake Geneva, who filled in temporarily while he restructured the business office and instituted a new financial reporting system, Schilling said.

Goedheer, whose contract extends to June 2009, is now expected to help implement some of the changes ushered in by the previous manager, such as transferring the control of some funds to principals and school staffs.

More changes could be ahead, said Schilling, such as hiring some more support staff to help with business duties. Eventually, the district could look into sharing a business manager with another school district.

But Schilling said the district was fortunate, for now, to hire an experienced business official, given the limited pool of job applicants in the field.

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