AMHERST — Amherst’s superintendent wants out — and will leave her position if the Amherst-Pelham Regional and Union 26 school committees approve a financial agreement in executive session Tuesday.
A confidential memo regarding Superintendent Maria Geryk, sent Thursday by School Committee Chairwoman Laura Kent to committee members, states “that the superintendent has accepted our financial offer that was voted unanimously in executive session on July 13, 2016, in response to her request for separation from the district.”
A copy of the memo was obtained by the Gazette.
The separation package calls for Geryk, who has been superintendent since 2012 and has a contract that runs through June 30, 2018, to be paid one and a half years of salary and benefits.
“We will entertain no amendments to the agreement until there is an up or down vote of the presented document in executive session because we have spent over 11 hours of deliberation on this topic,” Kent wrote in her memo, a copy of which was also sent to Thomas Colomb, an attorney for the school committees.
Kent on Thursday confirmed the contents of the confidential email, but declined to provide additional details about the agreement until it is voted on. She said the committees plan to be in executive session no longer than 30 minutes and will then share a statement with the community.
Kent said she hopes minutes from the executive sessions can be released soon after that, so that members of the public will know what was discussed.
“When we release the statement on Tuesday there will be information we will share with the community that will answer a lot of these issues (about) what’s been going on behind closed doors for 11 hours,” Kent said.
Efforts to reach Geryk by phone and email Thursday were unsuccessful.
The committees meet Tuesday at 5 p.m. in the Amherst Regional High School library.
Kent said conversations in the closed-door meetings centered around the terms of the separation. The committees acted after receiving word from Geryk, through her attorney, that she wanted to reach a financial settlement that would result in her leaving her job.
Kent said the issue of why Geryk wanted to leave was not “cut and dry.” Kent wouldn’t elaborate, but said very little had to do with the superintendent’s relationship with the committee.
Kent said only a small part of the separation agreement, which does not yet have a dollar figure attached to it, relates to the performance evaluation of Geryk. That evaluation was to have been taken up July 13, but was postponed. Instead, executive sessions were held that night, July 20 and Monday evening.
How much pay and benefits Geryk would be awarded are said to have dominated discussions in the closed sessions. One member of the School Committee, who requested anonymity because individual members did not have clearance to speak, said Geryk initially asked to be paid three years salary and benefits. Before Monday’s session, that was dropped to two years salary and benefits. Geryk has not been present at any of the three sessions.
Geryk’s contract states that her service can be terminated “by mutual agreement of the parties.” It requires Geryk to give at least 120 days notice to the committees.
Geryk, who earns $158,000 a year, became interim superintendent in March 2010 after then Superintendent Alberto Rodriguez abruptly resigned eight months into a three-year contract.
When Rodriguez departed, he received payments through that May at a cost of $39,000 to the district, or about one-tenth of his remaining pay over the three-year period.
Geryk, who had also served as interim superintendent for four months in 2009, was chosen for the permanent post Feb. 6, 2012, over two other finalists, by two divided school committees, the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee, which represents Amherst, Pelham, Shutesbury and Leverett, and the Union 26 Committee that oversees Pelham and Amherst elementary schools.
In Geryk’s most recently completed review last August, she received praise for running the district, with committee member Katherine Appy writing that “the superintendent and her leadership team have created the conditions to move our districts forward in the service of meeting the needs of our diverse student population.”
Member Richard Hood wrote that Geryk shows “concern for students who come to school without the advantages that many students have, and her efforts to help those students achieve.”
But Geryk has also been criticized for not being able to manage conflict, with a divide on the school committee and in the community a theme throughout her tenure.
Even though the majority supported her hire in 2012, critics like then-member Catherine Sanderson said the choice of Geryk came after an “orchestrated campaign” by “a skilled group of politically involved people.”
There have also been several high-profile actions that have created controversy, including a stay-away order issued against Pelham parent Aisha Hiza this spring, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination case that led to a $180,000 settlement with high school teacher Carolyn Gardner in July 2015, and anti-bullying presentations by Calvin Terrell in fall 2014.
Critics also have pointed to the high turnover in leadership at schools, with both Fort River and the Amherst Regional Middle School principals resigning this year. Both schools will have temporary leaders for the 2016-17 school year.
Geryk, who lives in Amherst, joined the Amherst school system in 2002 as a special education administrator and previously worked for the Frontier and Gill-Montague regional districts and in Westfield as a school psychologist, special education teacher and school adjustment counselor.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
