Two superintendent searches and a school referendum on board’s 2015 docket
Hamilton Township should have a new interim school superintendent in the next few weeks.
If history is a guide, the process for finding a full-time replacement for the outgoing James Parla may take a bit longer.
Regardless of how smoothly either goes, the hires are just two issues the Hamilton Township Board of Education must resolve in 2015.
In the first months of the new year, the board must hire an interim superintendent, bid farewell to Parla, start the search for a full-time school boss, complete its annual budget and figure out a plan for upgrading Hamilton’s aging school buildings. It’s more than business as usual, board president Albert Gayzik said.
Most of the business arrived on the board’s plate when Parla announced in the fall he will resign effective Jan. 31, after nearly three years on the job. The board wants to have an interim superintendent in place before Parla leaves.
It had finished collecting applications for the position Dec. 1, and planned to set the dates it will interview candidates. That’s about as far into the process the current board wanted to get, though, Gayzik said.
This month, the new board will decide which candidates it wants to interview, and hire from that pool. The next session of the Board of Education begins Jan. 7, with Jennifer Kraemer and Christopher Scales replacing outgoing members Patricia DelGiudice and Joseph Malagrino.
Gayzik predicted the search for an interim superintendent wouldn’t take long, and delaying the selection by a few weeks allows Kraemer and Scales to have the opportunity to interview candidates.
“I think we’re in good shape because we have a number of good applicants,” Gayzik said. “It should go smooth.”
The search for Parla’s full-time replacement may take longer. The new board will need to decide what qualifications it wants in candidates for the next superintendent, and whether it wants to acquire help from the New Jersey School Boards Association or a headhunter. Firms like NJSBA can help school boards decide what it wants in the superintendent, widely advertise the vacancy, facilitate the interview process and even guide the board in making a final decision.
It will be the first superintendent search for most of the school board. Only Richard Kanka sat on the board that selected Parla in 2012.
That superintendent search took nearly two years, with the board initially selecting Princeton assistant superintendent Lew Goldstein for the position in June 2011. After board members traded allegations of impropriety, they decided to scrap the entire initial search—including the selection of Goldstein—and start anew. The second search yielded Parla, who left Wappingers Central School District in New York for Hamilton in April 2012.
In between Neil Bencivengo’s retirement in 2011 and the start of Parla’s tenure a year later, the board hired James Sheerin as an interim superintendent in June 2011, only to fire him in February 2012.
So, potential bumps exist.
The 2015 search already has some intrigue. One board member has a conflict of interest which precludes him from participating in selection process. That member will have to appeal to the state commissioner of education to receive permission to be included, and cannot be involved in any discussions about the new superintendent until the commissioner grants that permission. Gayzik declined to name the member, saying the person’s identity will become “apparent shortly.”
On top of the superintendent searches, the board also wants to begin the process of getting a school improvement referendum on a ballot some time this year, Gayzik said. The board has two options in front of it currently: one that would include construction of a new school and another that would just involve funds for renovating existing schools.
Board members must determine the cost of each option, as well as what each option would require architecturally, before selecting one and putting it before voters. Despite everything else going on, Gayzik wants the whole referendum process completed in the next few months.
“It’s very aggressive to do that by April, but I would hope by the spring,” Gayzik said.
