When Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius resigns at the end of the school year, she'll take with her hundreds of thousands of dollars from a separation agreement.
The Boston Public School Committee is expected to sign a separation agreement Wednesday to give Cassellius at least $311,000, the Boston Herald reported.
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Cassellius will step down at the end of the school year, bringing to an end a three-year tenure marked by COVID-19 upheaval and leaving Boston's new mayor with major decisions on the education and policing fronts.
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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu unveiled Cassellius's impending departure in February, calling it a "mutual decision" by the mayor, superintendent and Boston School Committee Chair Jeri Robinson. No further reasoning was given.
Three months into her first term, Wu will now search for a permanent leader to take over atop the city's public schools at the same time that she is engaged in the process of appointing the Boston Police Department's next commissioner.
A superintendent’s contract can be broken with four month’s notice and the school committee extended Casselius’s contract last year, according to the Herald. Per her contract, Casselius must be paid a year’s base salary, or the rest of what she would have been paid, had she stayed until 2023, whichever is less.
Cassellius has been Boston's school superintendent since July 2019. Prior to that she served as Minnesota's education commissioner. Casselius is the second BPS superintendent to leave after three years on the job.
Cassellius took the top job in Boston eight months before the pandemic prompted a shift to remote learning that has since transmuted into staffing shortages, mask mandates and other complicated issues.
She came under fire from some parents and teachers for her efforts to reopen the schools for in-person last fall. She even briefly served as a classroom teacher in January when roughly 1,200 teachers and staff members called out sick during the omicron surge.
