Does WW-P have a full-time superintendent or does it have a part-time superintendent? I did some research and was able to find the numbers for 2016-’17 online.
Mr. Aderhold has a salary of $177,500; allowances of $8,695; bonus of $26,445. He has a secretary, Chris Grayson, who has a salary of $88,338.
Assistant superintendent Larry Shanok has a salary of $185,459; allowances of $5,553; bonus of $5,563. He has a secretary, Kathleen Betram, who has a salary of $92,439.
Assistant superintendent Gerard Dalton has a salary of $164,380; allowances of $3,073; bonus of $4,930. He also has a secretary, who I believe gets paid in the range of $50,000.
Assistant superintendent Martin Smith has a salary of $163,640; allowances of $6,113; bonus of $4,909. He also has a secretary (who never answers the phone) who I believe makes in the range of $50,000.
Gerri Hutner, director of communications, has a salary of $109,455. Adding all this up is a total of $985,876 — the eight people I have listed here take home in payroll nearly $1 million, which is .6 percent of the budget.
The operations line in the budget before Aderhold took over — and this was part of my public comments on April 26 — increased 15.5 percent from 2012 to 2016 when all the other categories (expect for transportation, special education, and health care benefits) increased in the range of 4.5 to 5.1 percent. In the category of operations, which includes payroll, part of the problem is that Aderhold keeps adding, and adding, and adding supervisors to the school district. He added 30! Yes, 30 supervisors!
Yet, Mr. Aderhold asked the BOE for added power to do “extra hiring” during the summer.
The hypocrisy that I find in these statements is dumbfounding. In September of 2015, Mr. Aderhold told me that he had to be “fiscally responsible” with taxpayers’ money and because registration was low he decided to send one kindergarten teacher at Dutch Neck to teach third grade math and shove 21 or even 22 kindergarten students in one classroom and with no teacher’s assistant. He even had the courage to tell me that the law allowed him to put up to 25 students in the classroom and he would not hesitate to do so.
Aderhold has too many commitments outside the school that do not allow him to focus and give his undivided attention to WWP. He is an adjunct professor in Rider, and he needs to devote time to prepare for his lessons and grade tests/finals, as he teaches for the Graduate School of Education.
He also is an avid writer for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) together with his friend Barry Saide. According to Mr. Saide’s website “Barry serves ASCD as a Member-at-Large on their State Executive Board, Barry is a current member of the PARCC Educator Leader Cadre. He is trained on all PARCC modules, which he turnkeys on a state and national level. Barry is former New Jersey Regional Captain for Student Achievement Partners. In this role, he selected educators from New Jersey to receive hands-on CCSS training from the creators of the CCSS, and helped match CCSS trained educators with district needs.
“Barry serves in an advisory capacity to the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation and National Center for Teacher Quality (NCTQ). In his role with the Gates Foundation, he serves as a member of their Teacher Advisory Council. He serves as a sounding board for potential educational policy, and helps in organizing and leading national and regional Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers (ECET2) convenings. In his role with NCTQ, Barry provides feedback and a thought partner for their Teacher Advisory Group. His focus is on teacher prep programs, student voice, and education policy.”
Given Aderhold’s close relationship with Mr. Saide, I believe that this is the reason why WW-P has changed the Blue Ribbon curricula to a less challenging one when it was not necessary as we are the only school district in New Jersey to change curricula for common core in other subjects besides math and English, the only two mandated by state Department of Education.
Articles written together with Saide and Rebecca McLelland-Crawley, the gifted and talented coordinator at Community Middle School include, on the ASCD website, “Harnessing the Power of Teacher Leaders” and “Awaken-the Whole Child.”
Coming back to my point, does WW-P have a full-time superintendent or a part-time superintendent? As he has all these other commitments it seems logical that he does not have the time to put into a complex school district like WW-P. That is why there are 30 supervisors and our schools are being managed more as a corporation and not as the Blue Ribbon school district that brought so much pride to the community for years and years.
As a superintendent he needs to devote his undivided time and attention to WW-P. The school district has 10,000 students whom he called his own children in the letter he wrote back in October, 2015. However, it seems that his energy is now being divided among numerous of other matters totally unrelated to WW-P.
Where is the fiscal responsibility that he talks about when shoving 22 kindergarten students in one class? Can’t you see the hypocrisy? Are you going to keep on rubber stamping every one of the administration’s requests or are you going to do the right thing: deny them and keep the money in the classroom for the students where it belongs?
Elections are coming and the community is already watching every single one of your moves. Keep the money in the classroom where it belongs.
Veronica Mehno
