CAMDEN – The local middle school’s newly hired assistant principal will serve for the remainder of the year and for 2007-08 to complete a series of changes begun with the removal of the former principal in March.

Members of the SAD 28 board on Tuesday unanimously approved the nomination of Aaron McCulloch to fill the assistant principal’s vacancy at the Camden-Rockport Middle School.

SAD 28 Superintendent Patricia Hopkins said she received praise for McCulloch from his previous employers at Messalonskee Middle School in Oakland, where he was the assistant principal, and Limestone Community School, where earlier he had served as assistant principal and athletic director.

“He has worked in a leadership capacity since 1999,” Hopkins said.

McCulloch has a bachelor’s degree in physical education from the University of Maine at Presque Isle and a master’s degree in education from the University of Southern Maine. He is working on a doctorate from an online university.

He will be paid $290 a day for the rest of the academic year and an annual salary of $70,500 for 2007-2008.

CRMS Principal Maria Libby said that in the time she has gotten to know McCulloch she has found him articulate and humorous.

“He’ll have great rapport with the students and the staff,” she said of the 450-pupil middle school.

Libby also predicted that she and McCulloch would work well together because their interests complement each other.

“He doesn’t have a mind for scheduling, but I do,” Libby said, adding that McCulloch likes working with middle school pupils.

In addition, she said McCulloch would work well with school parents and would learn the pupils’ names right away.

McCulloch’s position became available as a result of a series of administrative changes at SAD 28, when the school board in March placed former principal Brad Fox on administrative leave for the remainder of the year and elevated Libby, then assistant principal, to the head position.

The board gave no reason for its action with Fox, who has said since, through his attorney, that he will file a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission.

The board in March had planned to leave the assistant principal’s position vacant until 2007, but decided to hire McCulloch now because he was available, said Hopkins.