EDISON – The Edison Board of Education approved the contract for acting Superintendent John Dimuzio, thus solidifying the position that he has occupied since the November dismissal of his predecessor, Schools Superintendent Carol Toth.
Due to stated ties with school district employees, board members Joe Shannon, Mel Vaticano andWilliamVan Pelt and recused themselves from voting on the matter.
Shannon, whose sister is a lunch aide in the district, disagreed with the assessment that he needed to recuse himself from the vote, saying the connection was too remote, but he acquiesced to the decision.
The contract was approved 6-0.
Dimuzio was happy about the outcome of the vote and said it was time for the residents to move forward.
“I’m happy this was done tonight. I want this to go forward, and I want people to come together to talk about the referendum and the budget,” said Dimuzio.
Board member Deborah Anes said she would have preferred the vote to have taken place under better circumstances.
“I’d have preferred to have waited on this until the end of the year. Other people took on a lot of positions for which they were not compensated, and I would have liked to have continued in that vein. However, if I were to vote no on this, I would not have enough support to have any effect. I will support the contract,”Anes said.
The contract voted on during Monday’s board meeting confirms Dimuzio’s role as head of the district and formally lays out his responsibilities and compensation. As acting superintendent, he will receive an annual salary of $170,000, roughly $40,000 more than he was making in his previous position as director of personnel. The agreement also comes with 25 vacation days, and allows him to receive gasoline from the district for business purposes only.T
he board voted on Nov. 19 to place Toth on paid leave, and the decision has been viewed by some as controversial, mostly because the public received no forewarning and were given no opportunity to provide input. Several boardmembers also had said they were taken by surprise by the vote, noting that they had been unaware until the night of the meeting that such an action was to take place.
Dimuzio’s current employment contract is one of two different legal arrangements the board could have approved.
One option was the creation of an entirely new contract, which required at least five votes to pass, and given the number of board members who needed to recuse themselves, a near-unanimous decision from all voting members would be needed.
The other possibility was an addendum to his current contract as personnel director, identical inmost respects to a new contract except that this agreement included retroactive pay for the acting superintendent position fromNovember on. Thismeasure required only a simple majority from voting board members to be approved.
The terms of either agreement are set to expire at the end of the current school year, June 30.
During a public hearing on Dimuzio’s contract held on Jan. 24, board President David Dickinson said the contract for acting superintendent is on a year-to-year basis, the same as every other district employee except the superintendent. He later said that technically, Toth is still the district superintendent, since she was not fired but instead has been placed on paid administrative leave until the expiration of her contract in 2010.
During the Jan. 24 meeting, resident Hugh Gordon asked howmuch Toth would be making while she is on administrative leave, and Business Administrator Daniel Michaud replied that as of April 1, 2008, Toth will be paid about $180,000 a year.
Dimuzio’s pay raise reportedly is fueled by cuts and reorganizations within the district: one of three training director positions was cut, one school psychologist position was cut, the budget records supervisor was not replaced, and a substitute personnel director will be brought in to pick up some of Dimuzio’s previous duties on a part-time basis without health benefits.
Among some members of the public at the Jan. 24 meeting, this information caused not relief but consternation. Gordon noted that there were other times when parents asked for additional services fromthe district, such as increased busing, only to find that there wasn’t enough money in the budget.
“For this, suddenly there’s money?” asked Gordon. “You’re being awful cavalier with our money, Mr. Dickinson.”
Other parents agreed, saying that classrooms are often short of supplies such as white paper and glue sticks, and criticized the priorities of the board with regard to finances.
Dickinson noted that a new acting superintendent needed to be in place as soon as the vote to put Toth on paid leave was taken, because the schools could not afford to not have a superintendent. This led others to question why Toth was placed on leave in the first place, to which Dickinson replied that he cannot legally answer such questions, and that furthermore, the purpose of the hearing was to discuss Dimuzio’s contract, not Toth’s dismissal.
Gordon, during the Jan. 28 meeting, continued his line of questioning and, once again, was met with resistance from Dickinson.
“I think it’s a shame,” Gordon said. “You’ve done damage to our town, you’ve hurt our property values. People do not want to move to a town with two superintendents, with suspicious selection policies. … Why did you remove Toth?”
Dickinson again said he cannot answer that question.
“Nobody believes a word you say,” replied Gordon.
Emil Ferlicchi, president of the Edison Township Education Association, the local teachers union, said during the Jan. 24 meeting that he felt that many of the comments made by parents that night were more concerned with keeping “issues alive” than with making substantive criticisms.
“Some of these discussions are more concerned with keeping issues alive, rather than speaking about the issues and getting on with the business of educating our kids and what’s best for our district.… I guess what I’d like to hear tonight is to hear people get behind the true issue,” Ferlicchi said. “Let’s deal with this issue, deal with it straight ahead, move on, and get to the business of what’s best for the kids of this district.”
Correspondent Jay Bodas contributed to this story.