MILLBURY - A familiar face is replacing a favorite one as Lake Elementary principal.
At Wednesday's meeting, the Lake Board of Education voted to accept the resignation of Paul Raczkowski and hire Christie McPherson. Her annual salary will be $73,500.
Known affectionately as "Raz," staff and board members at the meeting said Raczkowski would be difficult to replace.
He won't be permanently leaving Lake, though. Later in the meeting, he was hired as grants coordinator for $33,100. Superintendent Jim Witt said it is a 120-day position.
Raczkowski retired in 1999 as Maumee Middle School principal. Before coming to Lake in 2001, he worked at Central Catholic, his high school alma mater, then at the Lucas County Educational Service Center.
One of his most challenging jobs at Lake was overseeing both elementaries, including the kindergarten-first grade building in Walbridge, during Lake's troubled financial times in the mid 2000s.
 

McPherson, who is a Lake High School graduate, is also a big part of that past. She and her husband, Dave, led a private fundraising effort, the FLYERS, to keep extracurriculars at Lake when board-approved money was cut in 2005.
She demurred to talk on that subject Wednesday, saying it was time for a new beginning.
McPherson, who is 50, has spent "an awesome 10 years" in the Northwood School District as principal of Olney Elementary and, this year, Lark, too.
She said the double responsibility was a major reason that she considered the Lake offer.
"They came to me. I didn't have any time to seek anything out," she said after Wednesday's meeting.
McPherson already has goals for Lake Elementary, including boosting its 2007-08 Ohio Department of Education rating of "effective."
"And we can do it with a lot of hard work and collaboration," she said. "I don't mind rolling up my sleeves at all."
At Olney, McPherson said, the school has been rated "excellent" five out of six years and recently received a state award for its programs for special education students.
The McPhersons have two children, Kelly, who just graduated from Bowling Green State University, and Cody, who attends Bluffton University and was on that 2007 bus crash in Georgia that killed six people, including four members of his baseball team.
Both children are following in their mother's footsteps, pursing careers as teachers.
In other administrative business Wednesday, the Lake board awarded three-year contracts to Walbridge Principal Dolores Swineford, who earns $51,500 annually, and to Transportation/Student Activities Director Tammy Tapley, who is paid $53,000 a year.