A day after Robbinsville Schools superintendent Steve Mayer’s death, no one in Robbinsville had processed reality yet. But two Board of Education committees met April 20 anyway. Business called.
“It’s very hard to have work at hand and be going through the grieving process,” school board president Matt O’Grady said. “The work got done that needed to get done but it was definitely illustrative of the fact that we’re probably not ready. No one’s ready.”
Amid the shock and grief of losing Mayer is the unpleasant reality his absence creates. Robbinsville Schools is without a superintendent, and will need to hire one. The manner of Mayer’s death—as a pedestrian being struck by vehicle—has raised issues of road safety and open space. They are topics that will dominate discourse in the township for the near future.
In the school district, the discussion centers around filling Mayer’s role and reassembling some sort of normalcy for the last eight weeks of school. For the time being, assistant superintendent Kathie Foster will serve as superintendent. She is the district’s only assistant superintendent, and oversees school curriculum. O’Grady said Foster is a “dynamic educator,” and he’s comfortable she can handle the role for at least the near future. Foster worked side-by-side with Mayer, and she provides the stability and certainty the district needs at this time, O’Grady said.
“We need to do everything we can to assure people that the schools are in good hands, that life will go on, that education will go on,” he said. “We’ll know when the time’s right.”
The Board of Education will consider candidates within the district for its next leader, but O’Grady also said he’s been praying that someone like Mayer hears about the April 19 accident and feels compelled to come to Robbinsville.
But O’Grady said he’s certain the state’s cap of superintendent salaries will limit the candidate pool, and he is meeting with state education commissioner David C. Hespe this month to lobby the cap’s repeal. The salary cap was introduced in 2011, and ranges from $125,000 to $175,000, depending on the size of the school district. Mayer made $157,500.
O’Grady knows he’s fighting a difficult battle. But to keep Robbinsville’s low administrator-to-student ratio, the district will need a multi-talented leader who can fill multiple roles, like Mayer did. That kind of leader would also allow the district to continue on the path Mayer had begun to blaze.
“It’s important that we continue the work that Dr. Mayer was spearheading,” O’Grady said. “It was important work to begin with, and it’s how his legacy in Robbinsville Schools will be defined.”
On the municipal government end, Mayor Dave Fried said he is “doubly committed” to preserving open space. Fried spent much of his April 13 State of Robbinsville address speaking about the need to preserve land in order to control the size of the township’s population. One of the parcels Fried singled out is on Robbinsville-Edinburg Road, near where Mayer was struck and killed by a vehicle while jogging with his dog.
He also said he will push for sidewalks on Robbinsville-Edinburg Road from the end of Town Center to Robbinsville High School. The only sidewalk on that stretch currently sits on the eastern side of the road, and runs from the entrance to the Saran Woods development at Chambers Farm Road to across from Robbinsville High School, a total distance of less than one-tenth of a mile. The missing link between Town Center and Saran Woods would be 1.1 miles, and would require taking a slice of land from all of the property owners along the stretch.
O’Grady also said the township and district need to have a frank discussion about road safety. The district already has consolidated bus stops with student safety in mind, and helped with the push to install a traffic light at the intersection of Sharon and Gordon Roads, near Sharon Elementary. O’Grady called navigating that process “a monumental task.”
He said the district and township should take every precaution necessary, but knows sometimes accidents happen anyway.
“I’m not naive enough to think that even if we can get all those things accomplished, that’s going to stop accidents from happening,” O’Grady said. “You could be as well prepared as possible. But that’s why no one knows what tomorrow’s going to bring.”
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