Seine River SD hires secretary treasurer in time for budget

The new secretary treasurer and chief financial officer for Seine River School Division (SRSD) is hoping to stick-handle her way through the deficit recovery plan after coming over from True North Sports and Entertainment.

Karastin Michalycia was officially named as the replacement for outgoing treasurer/CFO Amanda Senkowski at the Jan. 14 school board meeting.

With True North, Michalycia was a controller who handled things like automated electronic payment processes, and successfully established financial procedures during a transition to self-operation of food and beverage services. She has more financial experience in the hockey world, having been the vice-president of finance and administration with the Regina Pats.

Michalycia also led finance, operations, IT, and human resources functions with Economic Development Regina as chief finance and operations officer.

SRSD’s new superintendent Colin Campbell said there were applications from around the world, with six under serious consideration.

He said the hiring committee of administration and trustees saw the right mix of qualities in Michalycia, which went beyond the years of financial experience and training. They were qualities seen as important for an organization with so many employees working from St Norbert and La Salle in the west, to Richer and La Broquerie in the east.

“It’s her leadership skills and ability; her personality; her willingness to collaborate and work with staff has been reported to us through reference, and it’s been outstanding.

“For me, that’s really important, that you have both sides of the role. You have the soft skills and the human side, as well as you have the technical pieces and abilities to complete that side of the job,” said Campbell.

It was Senkowski’s last meeting, but she is sticking around to help as trustees and administration start preparing this year’s budget.

“Obviously this is an extremely busy time for school divisions in Manitoba. And to set up Karastin for success, our division up for success, it’s really important that we are able to have Amanda help out in the background and make sure that she’s kind of a co-pilot in getting our division through the budget season, typically mid-March,” said Campbell.

Senkowski was given credit for discovering accounting errors two summers ago when she was hired. SRSD has been climbing out of the multi-million-dollar deficit ever since, with provincial oversight during the creation of the recovery plan.

School board Chair Wendy Bloomfield started Tuesday night’s meeting with a thank-you to Senkowski and Reg Klassen, who filled in as interim superintendent since August after the surprise resignation of Ryan Anderson in May.

“Firstly Reg, although your tenure at Seine River School Division was pretty short it was indeed filled with lots of exciting new things. Your support in assisting the board to not only our new superintendent but most recently a new secretary-treasurer was certainly a couple of the highlights.

“But we also recognize the work you did to reassure the staff and the students during this transition, and to calm the waters and getting schools off to a great start last fall,” said Bloomfield.

“And maybe now you can start your well-deserved retirement,” she added.

Then Chair Bloomfield thanked Senkowski for staying on to help her replacement.

“We also want to recognize all the hard work and support you provided to the board and the division during an extremely difficult period of time.”