Fort Lee BOE Approves Contracts of Superintendent, Assistant

The approved Steven Engravalle’s contract as Superintendent of Schools and Sharon Amato’s contract as Assistant Superintendent at its regular business meeting Monday.

Executive County Superintendent of Schools Robert M. Gilmartin reviewed and approved both contracts, according to school officials.

Engravalle’s contract, which calls for an annual salary of $167,500, runs through June 2015 and is retroactive to July 1.

Amato, whose contract runs through the end June 2013, will earn an annual salary of $141,462.

The school board in late June to appoint Engravalle to the post for the next three years, pending county approval of the contract.

At the same meeting, the board also appointed Amato Assistant Superintendent of Schools through the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

There was some confusion Monday however about some of the language in the superintendent’s contract and about exactly what the board was voting on.

One question raised by several members of the public was about leave and a “benefits description” worksheet attached to the contract that listed Engravalle’s personal leave as “unlimited.”

Board attorney Matthew Giacobbe clarified that the worksheet simply provided a summary, but that the language in the actual contract states that the superintendent is “entitled to leave, without pay deduction” at the discretion of the board.

“It’s very clear that this contract requires any type of personal leave, whether it’s paid or not, is up to the board,” Giacobbe said.

Another issue that came up Monday—and one that had several residents and even some board members scratching their heads—was an appendix to Engravalle’s contract that lays out merit pay and bonus compensation for “quantitative” accomplishments like reducing expenses by more than $100,000 and special education costs by at least that much, as well as generating more than $100,000 in revenue, and “qualitative” accomplishments, including leadership of “a successful district administrative team” and developing a “thorough” process of evaluating staff.

What was missing, people said, was raising and improving student performance, something many said they would like to see included in the merit pay portion of the contract.

However Giacobbe pointed out that the appendix had not yet been approved by Gilmartin, and that the board was therefore not voting on merit pay Monday.

“There is no merit right now,” Giacobbe said. “Everything’s got to go back to the Executive County Superintendent. He is now awaiting written direction from [State Education] Commissioner [Christopher] Cerf and his department and how they’re going to implement that because there have been so many questions.”

Giacobbe added that once Gilmartin gets direction from the state, the board will have the opportunity to amend the merit pay part of Engravalle’s contract before final county approval of the appendix.

Business Administrator Cheryl Balletto said merit pay was part of Engravalle’s assistant superintendent contract and her own contract approved by the board in March, and that the state now has new guidelines “on what people are using for merit criteria.” She also said state education officials have distributed what she called a “guideline package.”

“The two clauses, [quantitative and qualitative merit bonuses], that will be in my contract that you’ll see at the public hearing [on Aug. 27], as well as in the original assistant superintendent’s contract that then got transferred to [Engravalle’s superintendent] contract was mimicked off of that guideline sent by the state,” Balletto said.

Fort Lee resident Stefanie Stuart said she’d like to see a “commitment” on the board’s part that once they’ve received direction from Gilmartin, “there will be something regarding student achievement in that appendix.”

“I think that’s going to be required by the state,” Giacobbe said, although he noted that the state is currently “grappling with” the question of equity among superintendents in high-performing school districts versus those where student achievement is more of a challenge.

Engravalle was not in attendance at the BOE meeting Monday because his wife has what school board president Arthur Levine called “a grave illness.”

“[She] has a very short period of time left,” Levine said. “So right now, Mr. Engravalle is with his wife, and I anticipate over the next three weeks or so that he will be spending a great deal of time with her.”

Levine added, “This is an incredibly difficult time.”