Less than a year into a three-year contract extension, West Windsor-Plainsboro School District Superintendent of Schools Robert Loretan announced he will resign effective August 31 of this year. The Board of Education accepted his resignation on Tuesday, January 9.##M:[more]##
“This has been an extremely difficult decision for me to make, due to the fact that I truly enjoy my job and the people with whom I work,” said Loretan in a prepared statement. “I have tried hard to use the many talents of our staff and administration to build upon the established reputation of an excellent school district. I hope that my contributions have helped, but it is time for me to move on to the next phase of my life.”
School board president Hemant Marathe said Loretan informed the board he would not be able to complete the term of the contract prior to signing the extension. By law, a school board cannot sign a superintendent to a contract of less than three years in length. “He has been talking about it for quite some time. He would like to have some time with his family. We knew for certain just before Christmas. But he had mentioned it for a while. I kept coming up with excuses for why it was not a good time for him to leave. This time I ran out of excuses,” said Marathe.
“Whoever follows him is going to have it difficult because he set the bar so high,” said Marathe. “He has done great things for the district. We are very grateful for that.”
Loretan was hired by the district in September, 2003. In the time since, three budgets have been approved, and the township passed a $27 million referendum for facilities upgrades. Loretan’s departure is particularly disappointing given that he is the district’s first superintendent in some time to be uniformly held in high regard. His tenure followed two leaders, Ray Bandlow and John Fitzsimons, who were criticized by school officials and the community for a lack of communication, among other things.
“Bob came here after two superintendents who didn’t leave on the best of terms,” said Marathe.
Loretan was not available for comment following the announcement. Neither he nor the district has commented on specific reasons for his decision to leave. Rumors swirled last year that he would leave at the end of his original contract due to his wife Ellen’s health concerns. The contract extension, signed in August, temporarily put those rumors to rest.
When he signed the contract extension, which raised his salary from $177,”792 to $183,”395, Loretan told the News: “As long as I can keep my health, and my wife can keep hers, and the school board wants me here, I want to continue working here.”
Loretan, who came to West Windsor from Buffalo, NY, owns homes in both locations. Before he was hired by WW-P, he was the executive director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents. His doctorate is from Syracuse University, and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees are from SUNY at Oswego.
The school district is now charged with the task of finding a replacement for Loretan. Early in the school year, board member Stan Katz estimated that a search for a new superintendent would cost the district $30,”000 if the administrator were not hired from within the district.
The district’s search for a replacement will start with in-house candidates. “The Board of Education acknowledges with deep gratitude Dr. Loretan’s success in developing and recruiting a highly capable and gifted group of administrators within the district,” reads a resolution passed by the board on January 9. “If a satisfactory internal candidate is found, the Board of Education would avoid the substantial and necessary additional investment of time and resources required to recruit outside the district.”
Said Marathe: “If and when you go outside the district, it costs money and time. The board thought it prudent to look inside, and then if there is nobody who wants the job who is qualified, we will start looking outside.” said Marathe, who would not speculate on possible candidates.
“I think that for the first time, we have more than one person who, if they were currently outside the district, would be on our radar, and therefore there it presents an interesting possiblility,” said longtime school board member Stan Katz. “It’s very uncommon throughout the state for a school district to hire from within, unless someone is being hired for an interim position. The district has never asked for internal applications separate from external candidates.”
That may bode well considering the time constraints of the search process. The district has until August to replace the departing superintendent. The 2003 search that resulted in hiring Loretan took 10 months, and involved hiring Connecticut-based People Management Northeast, a search firm, at the cost of $18,”000. The district nearly had to hire an interim superintendent before reaching an agreement with Loretan. The time before that, the district hired Tom Butler as interim superintendent before hiring Fitzsimons permanently for the position.
At press time, no applications had yet been filed. An application form is available on the district’s website, www.ww-p.org. Submissions are due by Thursday, February 1.
