The Board of Education will meet with Superintendent of Schools Judith Palmer at a special meeting Wednesday night and will ask her to stay on for at least another month.
Board of Education Chairman Rose McKinnon said the board will meet with Palmer and it is expected that the board will extend her contract though July 31, with the same salary, fringe benefits and duties in order to complete a performance review.
Palmer’s contract expires Wednesday. It was voided by the school board last month.
The board posted the meeting notice on its website Tuesday afternoon. The meeting is at 7:30 p.m. in the Oxford High School Library Media Center.
Click here to download the agenda.
Palmer’s attorney, Leon Rosenblatt of West Hartford, said Tuesday he and Palmer had been informed of the meeting and will be attending.
He said Palmer wants the meeting to be held in public session, not in an executive session, which are closed to the public.
“I’m not a fan of secret meetings,’‘ he said. He said this whole ordeal has caused some “anxious moments for his client,’‘ and said they have yet been told exactly why the contract had been voided. He said he is hopeful a contract can be worked out between the two sides.
Executive session meetings are allowed under certain instances, such as when a government agency is talking about legal strategy.
McKinnon, who began returning calls to local media this week, said the board is not trying to hide anything from the public.
She said the public will have an opportunity to speak about the superintendent at a public hearing (to address a petition signed by 350 residents in support of Palmer) sometime during the week of July 5 and at the board’s monthly meeting on July 13.
“Despite what some people have said, we are not trying to prevent public dialog. The way some people are painting this is just not true,’‘ McKinnon said. “We are just following the law.’‘
In May, the Board of Education met in executive session and abruptly voided Palmer’s contract because of conflicting language and extended it to June 30.
The board did not make known what the conflict was and decided that since it was voted in executive session it need not make its decision public. Palmer was not invited to the meeting.
On June 10, a school board sub-committee met, but could not agree on how to go about an evaluation of Palmer’s performance.
According to the minutes, McKinnon had argued that there had been no written evaluation of Palmer in two years.
Palmer, who attended that meeting, said she was concerned about being evaluated because the newly elected board (it changed from Democrat to Republican controlled in the November election) never set goals for her.
The sub-committee was in agreement it would use goals that had been set by the previous board.
Palmer earns $134,444 a year along with a $6772 annuity and a $3,600 a year car allowance.
