Former Beth-Center superintendent will be paid through October
The former Bethlehem-Center School District superintendent who last week submitted her resignation more than a year before her contact expired will be on paid leave for the next six months.
The district will continue paying Linda Marcolini – whose resignation the school board accepted April 24 and whose last day of work was Friday – her regular salary through Oct. 31, her official last day as a district employee. Marcolini’s $120,200 annual salary is set to jump to $123,806 on July 1, meaning the district will pay her more than $60,000 while she is not working.
Those terms are outlined in an agreement between Marcolini and the district, released Wednesday in response to a Right to Know request from the Observer-Reporter. The district will also pay Marcolini’s health insurance premiums while she is on paid leave. The agreement doesn’t include any other financial incentives related to her resignation.
Marcolini, of South Fayette Township, was hired at the beginning of 2014. Her employment contract would have expired June 30, 2018.
Reached by phone, board Board President Donald Crile wouldn’t immediately comment on the costs related to the agreement. He later sent an emailed statement that read, in part, “We want to improve the overall culture in our district. To do that and to make us a premier educational institution we have to have everyone on the same page. There is a lot of work to do, and now we have a superintendent search to conduct.”
The Beth-Center board on Monday approved Thelma Szarell – a retired West Greene superintendent – as interim superintendent at a salary of $250 a day while it looks for a replacement.
Marcolini didn’t return a message seeking comment following the board’s approval of her resignation, and was unable to be reached this week.
Her agreement with the district includes a confidentiality clause barring Marcolini and other district officials from disclosing the “existence or substance” of the agreement “unless required to do so by law.”
The rural district of about 1,200 students has a history of high turnover among its top administrators reaching back several years.
Her predecessor, James Stockdale, took leave in December 2012 and tendered his resignation less than four months later. His contract would have been up in 2014.
Stockdale joined the district in the summer of 2010, replacing Karen Downie.
Downie’s contract had expired in 2009 but she kept working on an interim basis when the board rescinded its offer to her would-be successor, Cynthia Fuselier, because of what then-board president Patricia Yohe described as a problem with Fuselier’s paperwork.
Crile, who joined the board in 2014, said he wasn’t familiar with the details involving the departures of previous superintendents.
“Naturally any district would hate to spend money unnecessarily. We as a board realize that.” He later added, “We want to control cost where we can, we are looking at our higher expenditures such as transportation and other areas.”