Assistant Superintendent A Budget Casualty

By: Alex Scofield
Published: 11/29/09

School Committee Vice Chairman Shaun P. Cahill confirmed this week that Assistant Superintendent Maxine Minkoff had been laid off as a cost-saving measure for the cash strapped district.

Ms. Minkoff, who was hired in May, was brought on at a salary of $125,000 per year.

“She was let go for budgetary reasons,” Mr. Cahill said on Wednesday morning.

Mr. Cahill said that Superintendent Mary Ellen Johnson in an executive session earlier this month recommended that Dr. Minkoff be released, and that the school committee gave her the go-ahead to make the move.

“Obviously, you hate to see anybody lose their job for a budgetary reason,” he said. “But at some point, there’s only so many other places you can cut when such a large portion of your budget consists of salary.”

Earlier in the month, Dr. Johnson said that district would need to make mid-year reductions to its budget when faced with several unanticipated costs totaling more than $200,000.

The district will need to pay $185,000 to place two special-needs students who recently moved to town in out-of-district programs and $18,000 to hire back a special education secretary as ordered by the findings of an arbitration hearing.

Half of those costs were covered through $100,000 in receipts from the school choice program, through which Sandwich schools receive funds for educating students from other towns, but there was still a more than $100,000 deficit remaining.

Mr. Cahill said he was not sure if school committee members would publicly discuss the decisions to lay off Dr. Minkoff at their next school committee meeting.

Dr. Minkoff is the former president of the consulting firm Educational Transformations and has worked as a high school and middle school mathematics teacher, a deputy superintendent, and a superintendent.

She had consulted with the district prior to her hiring.

The assistant superintendent’s position had not existed in Sandwich for some time prior to Dr. Minkoff’s assignment.

In the year before she was brought on, Dr. Johnson filled the roles of both superintendent and director of curriculum, a job with a similar description as assistant superintendent.

Prior to that, Dr. Johnson served as the district’s director of curriculum under former Superintendent Nancy E. Young.