Fredonia school board held a special meeting via Zoom last week for the purpose of confirming new hires and accepting letters of resignation. Fredonia Superintendent Dr. Bradley Zilliox said that because nothing is final until board approval, he wanted to give several people waiting some certainty of their future.

“Until board approval, sometimes people don’t feel comfortable submitting letters of resignation or moving forward with processes or withdrawing from other processes,” Zilliox said. “This is a meeting we added purely to get some of those approvals off the list, and allow those people to move on making plans.”

Though the meeting was held only a week prior to their regularly scheduled meeting that takes place Tuesday, Zilliox said it was important to allow these people to move on as quickly as possible.

One of those new hires was Michelle Russ, who will soon take over as the middle school music teacher, which was a position left vacant due to a retirement. Russ received her bachelors in music from SUNY Fredonia and her masters at the University of Buffalo. She’s certified K-12 music and has 16 years of teaching experience in a non-public setting and is currently an instrumental music teacher for the Paul Effman Music Organization.

“She teaches around 100 students in grades one through eight … and she currently performs herself in several orchestras and ensembles,” Zilliox said. “She went through two interviews at the building level with our music department… and has been deemed the candidate of choice.”

Russ lives in Amherst with her husband and two children, and has taught a lot in the private sector, but said she’s excited to work in the public sector, especially in Fredonia.

“I wanted to thank everybody for having a great interview experience,” she said. “I’m very excited to start working in the district. I did my college experience there and I love the town, so it’ll be fun to get back to my roots of Fredonia.”

Other new hires for Fredonia include Michelle Dawley and Madeline Webb, who will both be hired as probationary teaching positions in business education. Zilliox said they would share more information about those new hires at their next meeting, though Webb will not be in attendance due to travel concerns.