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.
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