The Board of Education declined to vote Monday evening to reinstate South Mountain School and Annex Principal Tom Gibbons for the coming year, effectively ending his employment in the district, though it technically has three days to convene a special session and overturn the superintendent's recommendation.

A crowd of about 100—comprised mostly of parents—gathered in the Columbia High School auditorium for Gibbons' Donaldson hearing, which he chose to conduct in public. (The Board subsequently held four other such hearings in closed session for other district staff members whose contracts weren't renewed for the 2009-2010 school year.)

Superintendent Brian Osborne was present, but the district was precluded by the regulations governing Donaldson hearings from responding to Gibbons' assertions and from asking him questions.

In his remarks to the Board, Gibbons focused on academic strides made under his leadership—especially in the area of reading—and on the performance review he received on April 3 from Osborne, which he described as containing "arbitrary and capricious conclusions."

"He has drawn a picture of a principal who manages well but does not lead well," he said.

Making a case for the positive effect of his leadership on learning, Gibbons asked not to be judged on NJ ASK data, which is correlated with a community's socioeconomic standing and "has much to do with excellence but may not have much to do with equity, but on other indicators. (Many South Mountain students come from the affluent Newstead area.)

According to Gibbons, all 102 kindergarteners enrolled at the two schools were reading on a first-grade level by the end of the year—up from 78 of 88 last year. He also cited increases in the percentage of first- and second-graders reading at grade level.

Gibbons then cited criticisms in an April 3 review by Osborne and repeatedly stated that this was the first time he had heard of these specific concerns. (He learned that his contract wouldn't be renewed later that month.) Among the criticisms was that he had spent time attending to the creation of a fireplace/puppet theater in the library media center instead of meeting with teachers before school started this year; that he hadn't held staff meetings in the spring of 2007-2008; that he'd shown poor judgment in hiring practices with respect to the hire of a teacher aide; and that he'd failed to file paperwork for one of his own absences.

With respect to the puppet theater taking time away from preparation for the school year, Gibbons said that he'd met with teachers throughout August. "There are very few teachers I know who wait until the day before school opens to discuss classroom plans with their principal," he said.

Addressing the criticism that he hadn't held staff meetings, Gibbons said that teachers had signed their formal annual evaluation for 2007-2008 accepting credit for the staff development hours. With respect to his hiring practices, he said that the teacher aide in question was requested as a sub, not a permanent hire. Finally, he explained that his undocumented absence took place on a day when he went to get a colonoscopy.

But at the end of the hearing, when Board President Mark Gleason asked if any other board member would make a motion to overrule Supt. Osborne and reinstate Gibbons, he got no takers.

Gleason spoke of the exacerbating factor of tenure in making personnel decisions. (If his contract had been renewed, Gibbons would have qualified for tenure.) "When you're looking at tenure," he said, "how sure are you?"

When it became apparent that no one would make a motion, some parents in the audience—which had been silent during the proceedings—angrily left their seats and started filing out of the auditorium, directing comments to the Board as they went.

While most parents said they weren't surprised that Gibbons wasn't reinstated, they were still disappointed by how it unfolded with the Board declining even to vote. "I was thinking just because of the public outcry that they might have taken a vote to say no," said Barbra Levy, a mother of three in the schools.

Others said they had expected a clearer revelation of the superintendent's reasons for not renewing Gibbons' contract to materialize. "I was open to hearing some real substantive reasons, and I did not," said Randi Mandelbaum, a fourth grade class president.