As business manager for AOS 93, Adam Hanson oversees a $20 million budget encompassing five schools in seven towns. He helped the district weather the shift from the now-defunct Union 74 to the current AOS. He works with principals and custodians, teachers and contractors, school nurses and town clerks. Now, he’s leaving.
Hanson, 34, of Wiscasset, will continue through October. On Nov. 1, he’ll start his new job as the Auburn School Department Business Office Supervisor.
“I’m going to miss a lot,” Hanson said in a Sept. 21 interview at his Bus. Rt. 1 office. “I’m going to miss my co-workers. My co-workers have been great. Some of them I’ve worked with the whole time I’ve been here. Working with the principals and the teachers and the custodians… I’m going to miss all of those relationships.”
Hanson, born and raised in South Paris didn’t move to Lincoln County until the spring of 1999, a year after his graduation from Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English.
Immediately after graduation, Hanson worked as a reporter and office manager for The Town Line, a weekly newspaper in South China and later, The Berlin Reporter, a daily newspaper in Berlin, N.H.
Eventually, he came across an advertisement for a job at the now defunct Lincoln County Weekly, a long-defunct local newspaper.
“It appealed to me so I looked into it and interviewed and was offered the job… so I moved here,” Hanson said.
Hanson worked for the Weekly until July 2001, when he got a job as an accounts payable clerk at the superintendent’s office. “I decided after two and a half years at a weekly that maybe I’d rather find something that had more regular hours… that was the biggest thing,” Hanson said. And I wanted something that had good pay and benefits and this job did. So I said, ‘Hey, I do okay with numbers. I’ll give it a shot.'”
The switch – from journalism to a clerical position – might seem unusual. “My motto now is, you never know where you’re going to end up,” Hanson said.
Hanson rose quickly through the ranks of the office, beginning training in order to spot the Human Resources Manager during vacations, ultimately stepping into the position full time when the former manager left.
In 2005, former Union 74 Business Manager Diane Wyman, now a Newcastle Town Office Deputy Town Clerk, began to contemplate retirement. Superintendent Robert Bouchard asked Hanson to learn the position.
For a year, Hanson trained with Wyman before taking over the position on July 1, 2006. “[Wyman] continued to work here for another two years,” Hanson said. “We flip-flopped. She did payroll, but that was great for me because she was still in the building… she continued to be a resource for me as I learned the job.”
“Diane [Wyman] served this district very well for 15, 16 years, and I’m really glad that I had the opportunity to work with her,” Hanson said. “She supported the superintendent’s position to offer me the position and had faith that I could learn the job. I’m really thankful to her for her support.”
Wyman spoke fondly of her protégé in a phone interview Sept. 21. “Adam is a very bright and intelligent young man who picked up the skills quite readily,” she said. “He obviously has proved his mettle by virtue of getting offered a job in a big city.”
“This district’s loss is Auburn’s gain,” Wyman said. “Adam will be hard to replace.”
Hanson is also grateful for Bouchard’s vote of confidence. “He’s really given me the opportunities that I’ve had to advance over the years and put me in the position to be able to make the move to the new job,” Hanson said. “I really owe him a huge thanks for putting his faith in me over the years.”
Hanson’s job description is varied and challenging. “The good thing and the bad thing about it is, every day is different,” Hanson said. “It keeps it interesting, but it can be a little bit difficult to settle into a routine.”
“The biggest piece is putting together budgets and monitoring those budgets throughout the year,” Hanson said. At the end of the fiscal year, Hanson, with a team of auditors, prepares an audit, checks his figures and reports to the state.
There are plenty of small, daily tasks Hanson supervises along the way. There’s the contract with First Student, the transportation company responsible for busing Bristol, Nobleboro and South Bristol students.
There’s transportation for special education students and meetings with custodians to arrange for “the financial side of maintenance” throughout the district. There are “all sorts of odds and ends that come up from day to day.”
After three years on the job, Hanson faced a new challenge: the reorganization of the school district in order to satisfy state consolidation rules.
“For my position and for [Bouchard] it was quite a big challenge at the time,” Hanson said. Initially, Union 74 considered forming an RSU, or Regional School Unit, with Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, Edgecomb, Jefferson and Southport.
The change, Hanson said, “would have been a huge undertaking and a huge change for everyone [in the superintendent’s office].” The towns scrapped the idea and, later, “the state made the AOS option available.”
On July 1, 2009, after two and a half years of talks, Union 74 officially became AOS 93. “For the most part, it continued to run like a union did,” Hanson said. “From the outside you wouldn’t see a lot of changes… There are more layers of budgeting and reporting to do on this end.”
Hanson is modest about his role in the district’s transformation, but he was instrumental to the process, Parker Renelt, chairman of the AOS 93 Board, said – particularly with the integration of Jefferson Village School.
“Jefferson’s situation wasn’t one you wanted to see,” Renelt said. “Adam was just unbelievably helpful in bringing them into our system.”
Although Hanson has little to say about that help, he’s clearly proud of the results. “[AOS 93] is a good fit for the towns and that was the most important thing at the end of the process,” he said. “It’s great having Jefferson as part of the district as well.”
Construction on a new, $18 million school in Jefferson is underway, and school officials plan to move into the building in Sept. 2011. “[Jefferson has] been really great to work with and it’s been exciting to see their new building come together,” Hanson said. “I’ll be sort of sad to miss out on seeing the new school open next summer.”
Hanson’s excitement over his imminent move to Auburn, however, trumps his melancholy over skipping the opening. The city is just a 30-minute drive from his hometown, South Paris, where his parents still live in the house he grew up in. His wife’s family lives even closer, in Auburn proper, where they own and operate a restaurant, George’s Pizza – “the best pizza in Maine,” Hanson said.
“I’m looking forward to [the new] job, but it was also a chance for us to move back home,” Hanson said. “We’ll be very close to both of our families. We’re very excited about that.”
“As we look to the future of buying a house and starting our own family, it’ll be great,” Hanson said.
The talk of starting a family isn’t just idle words – Hanson and his wife, Beth, are expecting their first child in May. “It’s a very recent development,” Hanson said. “We’re both thrilled to be starting a family.”
As for the new job, it’s similar to Hanson’s current position, with some small changes. “It’s about double the size of this district, both budget-wise and employee-wise,” Hanson said.
As Business Office Supervisor, Hanson will report to the district’s business manager, the position he holds in AOS 93, and he’ll focus on “the finance and budget piece… those are the pieces that I enjoy the most.”
“When you also factor in moving back near family and being where we want to be, it was a no-brainer,” Hanson said.
At AOS 93, Hanson’s co-workers and AOS officials wish him well, but are hardly eager to see him go. “We’re going to miss him badly,” Renelt said. “He’s just done an outstanding job.”
“I can’t tell you enough nice things about Adam,” Renelt said. “[Superintendent] Bob [Bouchard] is going to have a hard job replacing him. We wish him the best. He’s a nice young man. He’s got a bright future ahead of him.”
Bouchard is, perhaps, the man who relies most on Hanson in his current position, and Bouchard, too, can hardly offer enough praise – with the same twinge of regret.
“In Adam Hanson we’re going to be losing a universally trusted and respected business manager… someone that I really enjoyed working with and someone that I could rely on to do a great job and a reliable job in a very important position in AOS 93.” Bouchard said.
“I wish Adam the very best,” Bouchard said. “I’m happy that this is a step up for him and I’m sure he’ll do a great job for Auburn.”
The praise is gratifying for Hanson. “It makes me feel that I’ve done something right over the last four years,” he said. “I’m grateful to the school boards that they would put their trust in me to oversee the financial aspect of this school district.”
In the midst of the recession, when sloppy accounting practices and corporate or government errors in the millions sprout up regularly, Hanson’s fiscal policy is common sense. He wants school officials to “feel secure that this office is keeping a handle on where things stand financially.”
“As things come up, we’re planning for them,” Hanson said. “We don’t get blindsided by huge surprises at the end of the year. Oops! There’s a $50,000 hole there that we have to figure out.”
Ever humble, Hanson spreads the credit for that success. “It’s really a team effort with everybody. With the board, with the town offices and with this office,” he said.
Adam and Beth Hanson will miss friends, too, “some very good friends that we’ve met through our church and just from living here for the past 11 years,” Hanson said. The Hansons have lived in Wiscasset since their marriage in Aug. 2006, and Hanson lived in Damariscotta for seven years before that.
“I covered Damariscotta when I worked for [The Lincoln County Weekly] so I really felt a connection to the town,” Hanson said. “I’ll miss the area and I’ll miss the friends, but we’re not that far away so we’ll be able to keep in touch with people.”