Pottstown, Pottsgrove schools lost superintendents
Both the Pottstown and Pottsgrove school districts will start 2017 without a permanent superintendent.
Both ended the year with interim superintendents in place — Pottstown because of an expected retirement but an unexpectedly long search for a replacement; and Pottsgrove because of the not-entirely unexpected resignation of Shellie Feola, who had been clashing with board members increasingly.
Jeff Sparagana announced in November of 2015 that he would retire after the end of the 2015-2016 school year after nearly 40 years in education.
The school board hired the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit to conduct a superintendent search but by may, it had not identified any candidates it wanted to hire.
In May, Stephen Rodriguez, the district human relations director, was named interim superintendent — a post in which he remains as 2016 draws to a close.
In the meantime, an advertisement remains posted on the school district web site and sources say the search will start up again in earnest in the spring, when more candidates are likely to apply.
In August, the district next door also lost its superintendent when Shellie Feola announced she was leaving to take a job with the Delaware County Intermediate Unit.
The announcement came two months after Feola got into a shouting match about the district’s math curriculum at a school board with school board member Bill Parker, which was just the latest example of growing tensions between Feola and the new board majority.
The board voted 6-1 to accept her resignation and buy out the remainder of her contract, which expired in June.
Feola was paid $77,000, which is half her salary for the remaining 10 months of her contact; as well as another $73,000 for the value of unused vacation and sick-leave — bringing the total cost to about $150,000, school board President Rick Rabinowitz said in a prepared statement read before the vote.
The board also voted to name Assistant Superintendent William Shirk as the interim superintendent and voted against starting a search for a new superintendent.
Since then, there has been no motion or public discussion about starting the process of searching for or hiring a new superintendent.