With Brick Superintendent Indicted, What's Next For Board, District?

“How much longer are you going to wait to do something?”

That was the question Brick Township resident Vic Fanelli asked the Brick Township Board of Education last Thursday, asking when the board was going to remove the interim qualifier from the title of Richard Caldes, the district’s interim schools superintendent.

“I’m on the edge of my seat (waiting) like everyone else,” Board Vice President John Barton said in reply.

What Barton -- and everyone else -- had been waiting for finally happened on Tuesday, after 145 days: Walter J. Uszenski, the superintendent of schools, was indicted in connection with what Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato said was scheme to provide what amounted to taxpayer-funded day care and educational services worth about $50,000 to Uszenski’s grandson -- services to which the preschooler was not legally entitled, the prosecutor’s office said.

The Board of Education has scheduled an emergency meeting for 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the district’s administration building on Hendrickson Boulevard, Board Attorney Jack Sahradnik said Tuesday night.

There the board is expected to -- at a minimum -- suspend Uszenski without pay. It is possible the board could terminate his four-year contract, which has one year remaining.

Uszenski, 63, was arrested May 7 and suspended with pay the following day -- which was the limit of what the school board could do under state law, Sahradnik has said. The school board came under fire for the decision, with a number of residents saying the board should have ignored the law and refused to pay him.

Sahradnik, at the May 28 school board meeting, said doing so would have put the district at significant risk of litigation -- a fact that several board members said frustrated them because they felt the law left the district with no way to protect itself in a criminal matter.

Sahradnik, who said he had seen the press release from the prosecutor’s office, said he could not speculate on what the board’s actions might be.

“I have a call in to the prosecutor’s office to obtain a copy of the indictment so I can properly advise the board,” he said.

Richard Caldes, a Brick Township High School graduate who was principal at New Egypt High School before becoming principal at Brick Memorial High School in 2007, was appointed interim superintendent at the time the board suspended Uszenski. The board will have to decide whether he will continue in that role or whether it will go through the search process to find a replacement.

Uszenski was the only one of the four people indicted Tuesday who was receiving a paycheck from the school district. Andrew Morgan, who was arrested in May with Uszenski, had resigned from his position as the interim director of special services for the district in December 2013. Morgan’s wife, Lorraine, who had been the district’s academic officer, was not offered a contract renewal in June by Richard Caldes, who was appointed interim superintendent on May 8 during the same emergency meeting where Uszenski was suspended.

Jacqueline Halsey, Uszenski’s daughter and whose son received the services, is not a district employee.

Uszenski’s arrest -- combined with the resignation a month prior of longtime board member John Talty due to health reasons -- has triggered intense conflict among the current school board members, and a very public schism developed as Talty tried to return to the board when public outcry over Uszenski’s arrest was compounded by a plan to lay off bus drivers.

Commenters on the Patch have blasted Board President Sharon Cantillo, with some implying that she steered the board toward approving Uszenski. Attempts to contact Cantillo for comment Tuesday night were unsuccessful.

Uszenski was hired by a unanimous board vote in June 2012 after the board interviewed finalists selected as a result of a search conducted by William Librera of the search firm West Hudson Associates. Librera is a former state Commissioner of Education. West Hudson narrowed down the candidates and the full board interviewed all of the finalists in closed sessions before the decision was made to hire Uszenski.

Board members, too, have been openly critical of Cantillo in the wake of Uszenski’s arrest, most notably calling for her to be replaced as board president during comments made in surveys for the board retreat held in July.

Last Thursday, some of that conflict became public when Barton made it clear that he wants the district to cut ties with anyone who had ties to Uszenski.

Walter Campbell -- a former board member who had been volunteering with the district’s facilities committee -- expressed frustration over the way he and John Hyfantis, another longtime district volunteer, were removed from the committee, saying he was told that if he showed up at a facilities committee meeting, ethics charges were going to be filed.

Barton, who at first did not respond, finally said Uszenski was the reason Barton had pushed for the removal of Campbell from the committee.

“I refuse to serve on a committee where someone was appointed because of Dr. U,” Barton said. Campbell, who had applied to fill Talty’s board seat when the board refused to allow Talty to rescind his resignation, had served the district for years, going back long before Uszenski’s time, according to the resume he presented.

Campbell told Barton he felt the dismissal from the committee should have been handled better.

“Bottom line -- couldn’t anybody send us a letter?” Campbell asked.

But the conflicts are unlikely to end just because Uszenski has been indicted, because the level of distrust among the board members -- something that many expected would be tempered by the presence of Dr. Vito Gagliardi Sr., the former commissioner of education who was appointed by Executive County Superintendent Todd C. Flora to fill Talty’s seat until Dec. 31 -- has only mildly abated.

Arguments over efforts to complete a comprehensive update of the district’s policy manual -- a manual that has policies dating back as far as 1983, when the manual was first introduced -- went on for two hours last Thursday. Criticisms of communication -- the primary area of improvement outlined by Kathy Winecoff, a representative from the New Jersey School Boards Association, during the board retreat -- continued to flare up.

And with board members Susan Suter and Karyn Cusanelli as the only ones able to participate fully in any decision-making on the hiring or firing of the superintendent -- based on information presented by Winecoff at the board retreat about how the state Ethics Commission defines conflicts -- it’s a safe bet that the conflicts will increase simply because of frustration over an inability to participate. Under the Ethics Commission guidelines, Michael Conti, Frank Pannucci Jr., Cantillo, Gagliardi and Barton all are barred from having any role in the process, because all of them have relatives who are employed in the district, according to the doctrine of necessity statement that has been read at the last three board meetings.

What will happen in the coming months is anyone’s guess, especially with four board seats up for grabs in the election. Suter, Conti and Pannucci are not seeking re-election to the board. (Conti and Pannucci have thrown their hats into the race for Brick Township Council.) The final year of Talty’s term is up for grabs as well, with Talty and George White running for the unexpired term after Michael Thulen Sr. withdrew from the race. There are 10 candidates running for the three full terms, including Campbell and former board member Larry Reid. The other eight are newcomers to school board elections.

Will new members -- and a new superintendent -- give the district a badly needed fresh start and a chance to focus on the students instead of politics and personalities? Only time will tell.