School Changes in Retrospect

Image: My heavily annotated list of new job titles from May 2008.

At the risk of upsetting somebody, may I point out that the big change in job titles took place before Dr. Steve Gallon III was on the job.

The initial vote was at a May 5, 2008 school board meeting. See archived preview here. At the time, Dr. Garnell Bailey was serving as both interim superintendent and Human Resources director. She became assistant superintendent for Administrative Services after Gallon took office.

Gallon was hired in February, although his contract was not finalized at that time. A special closed meeting on his contract was held the night before his July 1, 2008 start date. No doubt he was apprised of the changes, but could not legally have had input in May. Click here for the blog post on the May 5 meeting and here for a follow-up.

Plaintalker commented on the controversy over Gallon's contract on this post.

In June 2008, names were attached to the new titles, but only for the month of July. A preview of the meeting noted that Gallon's contract had not yet been reviewed by Union County Executive Superintendent Carmen Centuolo. Read about the meeting here.

Plaintalker reported on a state-mandated audit report that was unveiled in July 2008. It covered the school years 2004-05 and 2005-06. The time frame would seem to indicate that any audit called for now would not be complete for a couple of years.

Here is a preview of the July 2008 meeting at which the two assistant superintendent roles were up for approval. This post, on Gallon's "dashboard" and the job changes, was one of three Plaintalker posts on the July 15 meeting. Please note the high volume of comments.

Plaintalker found analysis of the changes difficult, as personnel guidelines call for names of terminated staff to be on file but not made public.

In August 2008, Bailey and Gallon revealed a plan for ongoing assessment of administrators' performance. At the Aug. 13, 2008 meeting, Gallon pledged districtwide change. Mark Spivey reported on the meeting for the Courier News.

And there you have it, dear readers, Plaintalker's coverage of the job changes and Gallon's official entry as superintendent. This is the kind of reporting I can no longer do, much to my regret.

Perhaps this context to the current controversies will shed some light on the timetable of changes and the extent of scrutiny at the time. And maybe it will cut down on the sale of political wolf tickets.

--Bernice Paglia