Business manager to stay on staff to train replacement

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

For the past 25 years Marsha Maki has worked as the business manager at the New York Mills School District. During her time at the school district she has remained busy working behind the scenes, making sure that school operations ran smoothly and staff members got their paychecks.

Maki, who was hired in 1998 by former superintendent Jerry Nesland, is transitioning into retirement in December. While she will remain on staff on a part-time basis, she will be phasing out her responsibilities throughout the next year. She will also be training in a new business manager to eventually take her place. 

“I’ll be going part-time to help assist in the transition,” said Maki. “The discussion we’ve had so far is all of 2024, which actually gets us through all the audit cycle and start of the school year. Every month is a little different in here, what we do.”

Maki said she feels overwhelmed sometimes with the thought of training someone to take over her position. She said there is a lot involved with the position and  it changes throughout the school year. She also said that having the entirety of 2024 to accomplish training should, however, give the new trainee a good basis of the job.

“It’s this project, then this project, then something comes up that you do every three years. I have a report due in January that’s due every three years,” said Maki. “I’m not going to leave whoever it is out in the cold, I’ll be available for assistance if they choose and the board chooses that even after the transition time is over if they want.”

Prior to coming to the school district, Maki was working at the travel service at the bank after moving back home to her hometown. When the former business manager, Steve Dickinson, accepted a position elsewhere, Maki applied for the business manager position at NY Mills School.

“I had worked in the district office at school districts in Canby, Minn. and BOLD (Bird Island, Olivia and Lake Lillian, Minn.) before I moved back here,” she said. “So something full-time and the opportunity to be at the school—which is the hub of the community and where my kids were all day—that was a big plus.

“When I moved here, I could have moved anywhere, but I moved back here partly because of family, but I also knew that the school was a good place for my kids and for the community and I wanted my family to be part of that,” she continued. “We should all realize how important our school is in our community and how strong and good of a school we have.”

Despite the workload of the business manager of a school district, Maki’s job makes up for it in variety of daily tasks.

“The average day is never the same,” she said. “Somebody has to do the business side of the school, most people don’t think that, but bills have to be paid, supplies have to be ordered, payroll has to be done, budgets have to be set. I do deposits, and then just working on grants and all the requirements that the state has for so many of their programs, making sure all those things fall into place.

“There’s days that are quieter and days that you come in and you have your list of what you need to do and you get to four thirty and you realize you haven’t crossed anything off the list,” she laughed. “Which I think is true in a lot of businesses.”

Maki said that those longer days stem from working through some of the largest changes in her job throughout the years which has been the tightening of regulations from the State of Minnesota.

“The state regulations on things is probably the biggest thing,” she said. “The legislature has gotten very big on giving you the money, but having strings and requirements along with it. I think the state requirements on reporting and spending money is much stricter.”

For example, Maki said, “Even though the school might be getting $40,000 more in this area, you can only spend it on this and you have to report it that way.”

Maki grew up in NY Mills, graduating from NY Mills High School in 1978. She remembers her father, Rev. Toivo Esala, stepping in for part of a school year as principal around 1969.

“He mentioned at the time—and it always stuck with me—‘they always call us independent school districts, but we’re not independent because the government tells us how you’re gonna spend the money, what you’re gonna teach the kids, where the money’s gonna go.’ That would have been like ’69 that my dad was doing that. I think since I’ve been here, there’s been less and less independence within the school district.”

Some of the highlights of Maki’s career has been spending time with people she cares about on a daily basis.

“I love the fact that my kids were in the same building as me and that was always important,” she said. “Now I have grandkids here and a daughter teaching here. I love that. The people, the staff, are the biggest thing here. It’s such a supporting, caring group of people. The community supports our school so well, it’s the place to be in town.”

Looking forward to retirement, Maki already has plans with her husband and sister-in-law to make a trip to Jamaica in the new year. Her plans for the trip materialized before she had decided to retire, but she figures it’s a good first step in her newest chapter of life.

“It’s been on my bucket list,” she said. “Traveling and being available for my kids and grandkids more to help them out and then we’ll see what else comes about.”

Now that December has arrived, she looks forward to opening up her schedule for more family time and more opportunities to travel, but the impending goodbye is still bittersweet.

“I’m happy to be able to be here to take care of that part of the school for people,” she said. “It’ll be tough. I’m glad I’m easing out of it and going half-time. The hardest part of leaving, is leaving the staff.”