By: Krusher Kronkite
The Black Urban Times
PLAINFIELD — About 75 school
district employees will be out of a job following the city school
board's vote to renew the contracts of more than 1,000 district staff
members, but that is fewer than the 108 job cuts the board initially
proposed. Although the nonrenewals
are down from the initial projection announced when the 2010-11 budget
was introduced in March, that didn't make them any less painful, interim
Superintendent Anna Belin-Pyles said Monday.
"It's been a really hard job . . . and hard choices
had to be made," she said. "It's hard to say to anyone that you're not
coming back next year."Belin-Pyles
inherited personnel decisions tied to the $145 million budget created
earlier this year by former Superintendent Steve Gallon III. Gallon was
arrested in May and charged with conspiring to commit theft of
educational services in neighboring South Plainfield. Also charged in
the case are former Assistant Superintendent Angela Kemp and former
district administrator Lalelei Kelly; the next appearance in the
Middlesex County case is scheduled for July 30. Kelly was terminated
earlier this year, and school officials repeatedly have refused to
discuss the status of Gallon or Kemp, but the responsibilities of both
have been handed off to other employees.
Along with reducing the initial projection of
nonrenewals from 108 to 75, Belin-Pyles said the district also was able
to bring back 40 teachers' assistants as full-time employees. Several
weeks ago school officials and others expressed concerns that all of the
district's approximately 80 teachers' assistants would be forced to
convert from full time to part time, thus eliminating their health
benefits.
How the
approximately 75 nonrenewals were spread across the district was not
known Tuesday, as district Business Administrator Gary Ottmann was out
of the office, a district representative said. But the breakdown is
believed to be similar to that of the initial projection of 108
nonrenewals, which included eliminations of 62 certificated staff
(mostly teachers), 17 clerical and support staffers, 12 administrators,
and various other employees. The district lost about 75 employees in all
for the second consecutive summer, as the current budget represents a
nearly $9 million decrease from the 2009-10 budget after cuts in state
aid and mandated expense hikes took their respective tolls.
Few people were left in the Plainfield High School auditorium when
the board convened for the public portion of Monday's meeting around 10:30
p.m., well past the scheduled start time of 8 p.m. The entire agenda
was approved except for a single item that called for the elimination of
six district media specialists, effective today. Belin-Pyles also
announced that an agenda item calling for the creation of a new job
description, an "assistant business administrator," was being pulled off
the table.
The staff renewals mean that the district's roster of
employees earning more than $100,000 dipped slightly from 43 to 39, but
the number of employees earning more than $130,000 almost doubled,
going from 10 to 19. But Belin-Pyles, responding to questions about
administrator raises, said that every increase was issued in alignment
with the current collective bargaining agreements between the district
and its employee unions.
Gallon's
nearly $200,000 salary aside, Ottmann claimed the district's highest
salary at $176,485, with Plainfield High School Principal Brian Bilal
second at $150,760.
"Source"
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