Dear Ms. Peck,
At last night’s Lodi Board of Education meeting, the Board
approved Frank Quatrone’ s merit bonus goals by a 5-3 vote and will be
submitting them to your office.
Here are some of the objections raised by board
members and ignored:
· At
one point, your office sent me guidelines for merit bonuses. Guidelines stated that the Board of
Education creates the goals with consultation from the employee. The board members did not create the goals or
even discuss the goals. The goals were
handed to us by Mr. Quatrone and rubber-stamped by five Board members with conflicts
of interest (four trustees have family members working under Quatrone in our
schools and one is police officer working under Quatrone’s brother who is the
Lodi Police Chief). One member, Mr.
Carbonetti, wasn’t present for the meeting and has not attended a meeting since
May due to health problems. A telephone
was brought into our meeting to allow him to vote. Our by-laws don’t allow that. This was never done before: http://lodioverhaul.blogspot.com/2017/09/backroom-deceptive-lawless-dangerous.html
· None
of the goals are tied to student achievement.
· Last
night the Board voted to create a new $70,000 full time “Technology Support
Specialist” position to fulfill responsibilities attributed to Mr. Quatrone
for the goals.
· Last
week, there was a public notice seeking proposals for a “Literacy
Coach/Consultant” to fulfill responsibilities attributed to Mr. Quatrone
for the goals (Reading workshops).
· Mr.
Quatrone has other employees and consultants doing the work supposed to be done
by him to achieve the goals.
· All
of your office’s guidelines over the years state that the goals are time
sensitive. Portions of many of the goals
were supposed to be completed in July and August. Yet, the goals were approved at the end of
September. They were never discussed
until last week.
· Mr.
Quatrone’s contract expired in June 2016.
At no time was the Board ever informed that it would automatically renew
in January. It was never discussed. New Board members were never informed of the
clause.
· Mr.
Quatrone wants to re-negotiate the terms of his new contract. He wants his compensation to increase from
$192,000 to $226,000. In June, he wouldn’t
allow the two board members without conflicts to negotiate his contact (as has
been past practice for administrators). Instead,
he wanted to use “Doctrine of Necessity” to allow the whole board (full of conflicts)
to negotiate the new terms (guaranteeing his salary increase).
· The
Board never approved a new contract for Mr. Quatrone. We don’t know his new salary. Yet, he had the Board approve his merit goals
anyway.
· The
goals were not submitted prior to the start of the school year. They weren’t submitted within 30 days of the
contract’s approval:
https://homeroom5.doe.state.nj.us/broadcasts/2013/FEB/05/8883/Instructions%20for%20Merit%20Goals.pdf
The people of Lodi ask me daily: where is the
State? How is Lodi getting away with
this? Five Board members with conflicts
of interest should not be able to yield this power and behave in such a lawless
manner without any real oversight from the Department of Education.
Please
consider the objections stated when you review Mr. Quatrone’s merit goals.
Ryan Curioni
