MARS – At a meeting Tuesday night, Mars Area School District superintendent Mark Gross said the district’s ongoing search for a new varsity head football coach is still in progress but nearing its end.

“We’re not pushing the timeline, and we are still involved in the process,” Gross said. “We’re hoping to wrap things up soon.”

In January, the board voted to open up the varsity head football coaching position, which had been occupied by athletic director Scott Heinauer since 1992.

At a meeting on March 1, the district approved the hiring of Amy Schafer, Thiel College’s director of athletics, as a consultant to facilitate the interview process for the district. An internal committee of administrators and staff is assisting with the search.

At that meeting, Gross said the district received 23 applications for the coaching position.

“We were aggressive in our timeline, but it’s taken us a little longer trying to get everybody together,” he said. “We want to give it due diligence and make sure everybody’s present. We’re almost at the end, I believe.”

The district will also switch contracts and replace its existng 24 copy machines, contracted through Ford Business Machines, with a new fleet of 26 copiers by Toshiba Business Solutions.

“Our current copiers, we’ve been having a lot of issues with them lately over the last six months or so,” said Mars Area business manager Debbie Brandstetter. “It’s been a lot of machines down, on a weekly basis, and I’ve had people in the primary school up in my office using our copiers over multiple days.”

The district’s contract for copiers will expire at the end of June-early July, Brandstetter said, and due to the ongoing malfunctions, the district wanted to explore its options.

“We thought it was that time, and we got really good pricing, so we’re going to make that change,” she said.

The new contract will last for 63 months, and with an annual rate of $64,683.60, will save the district $2,264.40 a year over the current annual rate.

The annual cost per copier will be $2,487.83, which is $301.67 less than the current annual cost.

The new copiers will have increased speed on 17 of the new machines, and will utilize the Papercut Software program, allowing users to “release print jobs to any active device in the district,” according to a letter Brandstetter sent to the school board.

“If you submit your job, and swipe in with your badge, then you can go to any copier, and it comes up, and you can print out your job,” she explained.

Brandstetter emphasized having working copy machines is important for teachers.

“Especially in our lower grade levels, because they make a lot of handouts for the students, when those machines are down, it’s difficult for them,” she said.

Toshiba representatives will visit the school in the summer to train teachers and staff on how to use the new machines, and the new copiers should be ready for the 2022-23 school year.