Phyllis Bursh, Montgomery
At the board retreat last Friday, the Montgomery school board decided to wait a year before working on long-term planning due to the fact that there are four open seats in this November’s election.
However, before July 1, these same members will make a decision that is more important than long-term planning. They plan to renew Superintendent Nancy Gartenberg’s contract until 2020. Fearful that the majority voting block supporting the superintendent will lose seats in the next election, they are renewing the contract after three years rather than the four years delineated in her contract. This lame-duck majority has hurriedly created a new five-year contract.
What is not acceptable is that the board, entrusted with the public’s concerns, is circumventing public input by having completed the new contract without waiting until after the next election for members to make this important decision.
Moreover, the board is pretending to ask for public comment on her contract, (not job performance) at a meeting scheduled for June 21. What the board hasn’t informed us is they already submitted and gained approval for the new contract on May 26 by the Somerset County superintendent. The new contract begins July 1, 2015 with bonus incentives to 14.99 percent of her salary and allows for a renegotiation of salary once the salary cap for superintendents is lifted in 2016.
The school board should stop this charade of caring about public input and defer consideration of a new contract until the newly elected members of the board join the process.
Phyllis Bursh
Montgomery
