Washington Township School District (Gloucester County)
Walsh Elementary has a new assistant principal
The board approved a new assistant principal for Walsh Elementary School at its Oct. 13 meeting.
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Saturday, October 24, 2026
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Latest New Jersey stories
Washington Township School District (Gloucester County)
Board votes 5-4 not to renew the superintendent's contract
On September 15, 2026 the board added an item to its agenda and then voted, five to four, not to renew Superintendent Dr. Eric Hibbs's contract, and to send him formal notice of the non-renewal under the state law that governs superintendent contracts. Because most board members are legally conflicted out of anything to do with the superintendent, the board first had to invoke the Doctrine of Necessity - a rule that lets a conflicted board act when there is no other way to get a decision made - limited to the superintendent items on that night's agenda.
Millburn Township Public Schools
Jaclyn Basso introduced as assistant principal for South Mountain and Washington
Millburn introduced Jaclyn Basso as the new assistant principal serving both South Mountain School and Washington School.
Winslow Township School District
A year with an interim superintendent, and a search only starting now
Winslow has been run by an interim superintendent since September 2025. The board advertised special meetings on August 21 and 22, 2025 to interview candidates for the post, cancelled the second, and on September 4, 2025 met to send the interim superintendent's contract to the county for approval. Mark Pease has appeared on every agenda since as interim superintendent, on a contract from September 16, 2025 to June 30, 2026 at a base salary of $200,000 with no allowances or stipends, later extended for 2026-27. Superintendent H. Major Poteat stayed under contract at a base salary of $280,194 through June 2027, so the district carried two superintendent salaries at once; his retirement, effective September 1, 2026, was approved on March 25, 2026 with the board president abstaining, and the same motion placed an unnamed employee on paid administrative leave from April 13 to August 31, 2026. On September 9, 2026 the board finally voted 8 to 0 to hire the state school boards association to run a search, at a cost not exceeding $8,000, with the vice president saying it would begin on October 1, 2026.
Trenton Public School District
Sixteen new hires were rescinded weeks before opening day, and three parent liaison posts were abolished
The personnel agenda approved on August 31, 2026 created twelve positions, mostly special-education teachers and paraprofessionals for autism and multiple-disabilities classes, and abolished fourteen. Among the abolished were parent liaison posts at Dunn, Martin Luther King and Holland and a social emotional learning specialist at Dunn, following the two social workers and two other specialists cut earlier in the year. The same resolution rescinded sixteen new hires, nine of them dated August 2026, covering special education, English as a second language, computer, nursing and bus driver posts, and accepted resignations taking effect after the school year had started. Gregory Elementary's principal retirement was announced with no successor named.
Ridgewood Public School District
Daniel O’Keefe appointed Ridgewood High School assistant principal
The board approved Daniel O’Keefe as Ridgewood High School’s assistant principal. His appointment runs from October 15, 2026, through June 30, 2027, at a listed annual salary of $143,000.
Board approves two principal role changes, including a new Finance Academy principal
The board approved transferring principal James Mondesir to J. Christian Bollwage Finance Academy and moving principal John Byrne into an interim staff-development-coordinator role.
Elizabeth board approves superintendent employment contract through 2030
The Elizabeth Board of Education approved an employment contract for Superintendent Olga Hugelmeyer covering 2026-2030.
Vernon Township School District
District brings back an assistant superintendent and rewires its leadership
On July 30, 2026 the board approved a new organisational chart that abolishes and recreates a set of central office jobs. Vincent Gagliostro was appointed assistant superintendent at $176,151, with the role widened beyond curriculum to cover evaluation, compliance and student services. The chart also creates a director of human resources, a director of English language arts, a director of school counselling, testing and multi-tiered supports, and a director of security and residency, and splits special education leadership between preschool to grade 5 and grades 6 to 12.
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District creates new Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum & Instruction position, replacing Director of Elementary Education role
At its July 27, 2026 meeting, the Board of Education approved abolishing the Director of Elementary Education, PK-5 position and establishing a new Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum & Instruction position effective July 1, 2026. Matthew Kriley was reassigned from Director of Elementary Education, K-5 to the new Assistant Superintendent role, and his non-represented employment contract for 2026-2027 was separately approved.
Egg Harbor Township School District
Senior contracts handled behind closed doors as a board seat turns over
The 2026-27 contracts of both assistant superintendents and the business administrator were reviewed in closed session on May 12, 2026, and no public vote or outcome appears in the minutes; all three were on one-year contracts due to expire on June 30, 2026. The board also held a second, separate closed session on June 16, 2026 specifically to discuss the superintendent's evaluation, again with no public action afterwards. Separately, a member who sat through the June 16 meeting appears in no roll call after it; on July 21 the board interviewed six candidates for the vacancy and appointed Alphonso Harrell by eight votes to none to serve until the 2027 reorganisation. The minutes never say whose seat was vacant or why.
Middletown Township Public School District
Two schools get new principals after a resignation and a reassignment
On July 21, 2026 the board unanimously appointed Mr. Rasmussen as principal of Leonardo Grade School and Dr. Cook as principal of Bayshore Middle School. Both are long-serving district administrators. The openings followed the resignation of Bayshore Middle School's principal, which a resident at the June 23 meeting linked to two years of uncertainty about whether the school would close, and the reassignment of Leonardo's principal to another position.
Board reopens the superintendent's contract at a special meeting
The Jersey City Board of Education gave legal notice that at a special meeting on Thursday, July 16, 2026 it would hold a public hearing on the contract of Superintendent of Schools Dr. Norma Fernandez and then take action to 'renegotiate, extend, amend, or otherwise alter' its terms. A revised notice added that the board also intended to appoint a Board Trustee at the same meeting. Both notices state that formal action would be taken. The district publishes no minutes, agenda or recording for that meeting on the pages collected here, so what the board decided is not on the public record this page can reach.
Winslow Township School District
Almost every school changed principal or assistant principal
Winslow moved most of its school leaders in a single summer. On June 10, 2026 the principal of School 4 became director of student support services from September 1. On June 24 the board moved five administrators from July 1: the School 6 principal to School 1, the School 1 principal to middle school assistant principal, the high school principal to School 6, a School 6 assistant principal to the high school, and another to School 6. On July 15 it appointed a new high school principal at $170,000 from August 16 and a new high school assistant principal at $100,000, and moved a serving assistant principal to a supervisor post. In August an assistant principal was promoted to principal of School 4 at $118,000, and in September another high school assistant principal was appointed at $103,500 from October 16. A middle school assistant principal had resigned in May and a high school assistant principal had been reassigned to teaching.
The mentoring a new teacher must complete to keep their licence may come out of their own pocket
New Jersey requires every novice teacher to be mentored during their provisional year, and the district's mentor programme plan for 2026-27 sets the stipends: $550 for mentoring a teacher on the standard certification route and $1,000 for one on the alternate route, with a mentor limited to two provisional teachers at a time. The plan then states that if the state appropriates funds they pay for mentor compensation and training, and that if the state does not, the compensation is the novice teacher's own responsibility. The plan gives no count of how many novice teachers the district expects, and no document in the district's published set does.
Roxbury Township School District
High school loses its assistant principal weeks after reappointing him
On May 11, 2026 the board set the 2026-27 salaries for every principal, assistant principal and supervisor. One month later, on June 15, both the assistant principal of Roxbury High School and the supervisor of science, visual arts and engineering, design and technology resigned effective June 30 - the same people the board had just reappointed at $122,122 and $116,812. The superintendent told the board the search for a replacement assistant principal was under way, and on July 13 the board appointed Dr. Jason Toncic to the post at $125,000 pro rata from mid-September. Two other supervisors also left during the year: mathematics, business and family and consumer sciences in May, and English language arts and social studies in the autumn. Lincoln/Roosevelt School separately got a new principal in December 2025 after five weeks under an interim.
Piscataway Township School District
A new assistant superintendent, and four school leadership changes in one year
Below the superintendent, Piscataway's leadership changed repeatedly during the year. Dr. Najla Solomon was recommended and then confirmed as Assistant Superintendent at the June 11, 2026 meeting, subject to contract approval by the Executive County Superintendent. Dr. William Baskerville, the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, retired and was honoured at the July 9, 2026 meeting. At school level, Randolphville Elementary School's principal resigned effective January 23, 2026 and Stacy George-Mingo was appointed to the post from July 1, 2026 at $135,231; Knollwood Elementary School's assistant principal resigned effective June 30, 2026 and its principal went on medical leave from July 1 to November 1, with an acting principal named for that period; and the principal of the Children's Corner preschool resigned effective August 11, 2026.
A parent tells the board Horace Mann has had three interim principals in four years
At the June 30, 2026 meeting a parent told the board that her daughter had been at Horace Mann Community School for four years and had had three principals in that time, all of them interim, and that one school year began with no assigned principal at all. She said there had not been enough transparency about why the school keeps having an interim principal or about who parents can talk to, that it affects the PTA and parents' ability to understand school policies, and asked when a permanent principal would be placed.
Gloucester Township School District
Four senior administrators left within a year
Between April and June 2026 Gloucester Township lost its business administrator and board secretary, its human resources director, its director of special services and its board solicitor. The business administrator's resignation took effect on June 30, 2026 and the board had to appoint an acting administrator on two short interim contracts to cover June and the start of the new year. A board member said at the June 29 meeting that she was concerned about the amount of turnover in the administration and among professional staff, and that stability matters.
Gloucester Township School District
New special-services director, a new principal and a new HR supervisor
The board filled the gaps it created. On April 20, 2026 it hired Jill Trainer as Director of Special Services at $161,000 a year from July 1, replacing a retiring director. On June 29 it celebrated a new principal for Chews Elementary School and moved the principal of Gloucester Township Elementary School into a new human resources supervisor post at $152,000 a year. Loring Flemming Elementary School separately lost its principal to retirement in June and its assistant principal to a promotion elsewhere, and the board reported two replacement appointments in train by August.
Superintendent's contract set to run five more years
The agenda for the June 29, 2026 board meeting includes the public hearing New Jersey law requires before a superintendent contract changes, and a resolution to end Superintendent Dr. Christopher Irving's current contract on June 30, 2026 and replace it with a five-year extension running July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2031. The agenda records that the Essex County Executive Superintendent had already approved the extension. The same agenda includes Dr. Irving presenting a five-year district strategic plan.
Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District
Ravine Drive Elementary changes principal after a long leave
Ravine Drive Elementary School's principal went on paid medical leave from September 2025, had it extended repeatedly through the year, and retired on May 31, 2026. The assistant principal of Matawan Regional High School, Lorena Carbajal, was moved to Ravine Drive as assistant principal in September 2025 to cover, was made acting principal from May 1, 2026, and on June 15, 2026 was appointed permanent principal at $176,500. An interim assistant principal was appointed at the high school in January 2026 to cover the post Carbajal left, and in June the board appointed Josh Aronowitz as the high school's assistant principal in charge of athletics. The same June meeting created three new director-level posts in a central-office reorganisation.
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