Lawrence retools administrative responsibilities

Familiar faces will not only be in their regular positions, but will be up to their elbows in new responsibilities as the Lawrence School District has several administrators doing more than one job as a cost-saving measure.

Deputy Superintendent Gary Schall, who will become the superintendent on July 1, was the district’s director of music. That position will be eliminated and Richard Buckley, a high school music teacher, and Pam Gallopini, a music instructor at the middle school, will serve as district music coordinators.

The assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction position was also eliminated and those responsibilities will be overseen by current Number Four School principal Dr. Ann Pederson. She will also continue being the educational leader at the Wanser Avenue school.

District of Physical Education, Health and Athletics Pat Pizzarelli will become assistant superintendent for student and community affairs. He will continue in that capacity and add being in charge of student discipline, including disciplinary hearings.

“We are restructuring the way we do business,” said Schall, who noted that these people will more than likely receive “some sort of stipend or increase” for their added responsibilities, but he noted the current shift is a huge savings.

Though the district expects to lose $2.2 million in state and federal aid, officials anticipate realizing $2.2 million in savings through staff cuts that they say will allow them to enhance educational programs.

Schall noted that certain positions were added about 10 years ago when the district had the money to pay for those salaries and benefits. He said there has to be an “institutional restructuring” of the district.

“We have to be flexible in our thinking and we can’t lock into the mold of how we operated twenty, thirty, forty years ago,” Schall said.

Despite the noted savings from those cost-cutting measures and total staff cuts some residents were not happy with Lawrence not filling positions or having district employees doubling up on job responsibilities.

“The Lawrence School District is in grave trouble and it doesn’t affect their everyday life,” Atlantic Beach Jay Silverstein said at the Feb. 15 Board of Education meeting. He claimed that the measures undertaken by the district with the BOE’s is “dismantling” the district. “What you are doing is wrong.”

But, BOE Vice President Dr. Asher Mansdorf said that the district’s administration makes the decisions regarding how they manage what he called the “educational product” and the board is confident in its administrators.

“The Board of Education has full faith that Gary Schall is taking the district in the right direction and we are behind him one-hundred percent,” Dr. Mansdorf said.

At the board meeting, the trustees approved Dr. Jennifer Lagnado as interim high school principal. Lagnado, who was serving in that position since Jan. 1, officially takes the post previously held by Geoffrey Touretz.

He was suspended in October and handed in his resignation on Dec. 31. District officials continue to decline to comment about why Touretz, who was the high school principal for the past seven years, was suspended.