Board Member Appointed Readington School Chief

Barbara Sargent resigned her position on the Board of Education, since she will be taking a post as superintendent of the Readington School District in July.

“I’ve been offered and accepted a position as a superintendent in another school district,” she said after the board’s Monday meeting.  “That district reasonably expects my full commitment.”

Sargent had served as Assistant Superintendent in the Madison School District since August 2005. Prior to that she was principal at Orchard Hill Elementary School and Village Elementary School in Montgomery Township, and Dickerson Elementary School in Chester Township.  She has also worked as a language arts supervisor for the Somerset Hills School District, a disciplinarian/supervisor at Maplewood Middle School, and has been a high school English teacher and middle school Language Arts and Social Studies teacher.

She will begin her position as Readington superintendent July 1, she said.

The Readington School district is a kindergarten through eighth grade school district in Hunterdon County. It has had a superintendent vacancy since January, when Superintendent Jorden Schiff left for his post in Hillsborough.

Sargent is completing the second year of her three-year term on the board, having been elected in 2009.  During her two years, she’s served as chairman of the Personnel Committee and has been a member of the board’s Curriculum Committee.

“It’s certainly never one person,” she said of her work on the board.  “It’s the efforts of the entire board.  I’m particularly proud of the increase in AP classes and science classes in the high school.”

Once Sargent leaves her post, the board will need to find a replacement for the remaining year in her term.  The person chosen for the post would fulfill the board member duties for a year—including taking the New Jersey School Board’s ethics training and other board member trainings—but would need win the seat in the 2012 elections to continue serving on the board.

One board member, Thomas Kinst, asked whether the board would consider appointing the candidates from this year’s elections to the spot, suggesting the board consider the candidate who received the fourth-highest vote tally. He also asked whether the board could have been alerted earlier, however, Sargent said she did not receive confirmation until after the elections.

Kinst’s suggestion would have candidate Frank Herbert, who received 1,124 votes, take the seat.

While Schiff said the board can nominate a resident for an open seat, it will likely advertise the vacancy and conduct candidate interviews to fill the seat.

Residents interested in the open seat would need to submit a cover letter and resume to Aiman Mahmoud, the district’s Business Administrator, and would undergo a public interview in front of the entire board.  The board would then vote on the candidates during a closed session and reconvene to appoint the chosen candidate.