Michael Mansfield

The Dunkirk Board of Education approved Michael Mansfield’s employment agreement as district business administrator Tuesday.

Mansfield is currently both superintendent and business administrator of the Dunkirk school district, but will leave the superintendent position as of July 1. Terms of his new employment agreement were not disclosed.

The district wants to replace Mansfield internally. Board of Education President Kenneth Kozlowski had some comments on the matter Tuesday.

“I guess we’re setting kind of an aggressive schedule to replace him,” Kozlowski said. “I’ve got flyers here that (board member Stephen) Helwig was nice enough to print up and make, and there’s a little change from what you got yesterday. The letters of reference, we don’t need. If you’ve got them, that’s fine — they’re not required.”

Kozlowski encouraged candidates to quickly send letters of intent to District Clerk Tara Jakse “so we can get moving on this, spend time on your interview, presentation, whatever you may have. But we’re going to be moving ahead. If there’s any questions, please ask.”

He added, “I’m glad that we’re doing it internally. We know we have some good people inside, and we’re confident that they can fill these shoes.”

Kozlowski and Mansfield planned to meet with State Senator George Borrello and State Assemblyman Andrew Molitor Friday about state budget issues. Kozlowski said special education costs are rising faster than state aid, “and we want to see if we can’t get any help there.”

The Dunkirk district’s duo will also discuss a source of frustration among many local school officials: New York state’s mandate that all schools convert to electric buses.

Kozlowski said, “Of course, we’re going to talk to them about the electric buses, because that’s a large expense — even though we don’t own our own buses, just to prepare our buildings to receive electric buses is going to be a large expense.”