Princeton Superintendent of Schools Carol Kelley resigns after short and tumultuous tenure
Carol Kelley, the superintendent of the Princeton Public Schools, announced in an email to staff members on Friday morning that she has resigned as the head of the school district. The announcement comes less than two and a half years since she began her job in Princeton running the district that serves about 3,800 students.
“This week, after much consideration, I made the difficult decision to resign as superintendent of the Princeton Public Schools,” Kelley wrote in her email to staff. “This decision has not come easy, but for personal and professional reasons, I must take some time to reset and recenter myself so I can later return to public education and continue to positively impact students.”
The board of education for the Princeton Public Schools sent an email to parents, staff, and students about a half hour after Kelley’s email informing people that Kelley submitted her resignation.
Kelley’s resignation will take effect Aug. 31. She will be on a paid leave of absence until then. Kelly’s salary is $244,800 per year.
The board will hold a special meeting at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 30 at the Valley Road Administration Building to take a formal vote on Kelley’s leave of absence and resignation and discuss plans to hire an interim superintendent.
“We thank Dr. Kelley for her service, and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors,” reads the school board email.
Kelley’s tenure has been marked by controversies that included concerns about potential changes in the math curriculum and the departure of Princeton High Principal Frank Chmiel. Many parents and students were unhappy with the way Chmiel’s departure was announced. Chmiel, who did not have tenure, fought the nonrenewal of his contract and filed an appeal regarding his dismissal with the state Office of Administrative Law. He is now a social studies teacher in his hometown in the Elizabeth Public Schools.
This fall there was more chaos in the district as a new company took over the after-school program and had major staffing issues. Kelley told concerned parents she couldn’t join a September Zoom meeting via video to discuss the issue and could only participate by phone because she was driving to a ferry for a retreat on Cape Cod.
Kelley previously served as the superintendent of schools of Oak Park Elementary School District 97, a PreK-8 public school district located just outside of Chicago. Before working in Illinois, Kelley served as the superintendent of schools in Branchburg Township from 2012 to 2015. She has held numerous positions in other New Jersey public schools, including serving as the director of curriculum and instruction for the Hunterdon Central Regional High School District in Flemington, as principal of Milltown Elementary School in Bridgewater, as K-12 supervisor of mathematics in the Franklin Township Public Schools, assistant principal of Franklin Park Elementary School and the Sampson G. Smith Middle School in Franklin Township, and as a teacher at the Smith Middle School.
Kelley replaced interim superintendent Barry Galasso after Steve Cochrane left the district.
Good Riddance. She made harm to our fantastic school system, but thankfully nothing from which we can’t rebuild on.
Princeton Schools need to go back to the quality and level that they are known and respected for. The focus should be on the quality of education by raising standards, not lowering them to improve non-educational-metrics.
Whatever Frank!!!
Can I receive a 10-month paid leave of absence at my annual salary of $200,000 as well?
I’m glad to see the change as the district needs a restart and needs to be a lot less political, but the district really knows how to spend the money of the taxpayers.
Unbelievable. What is the range of salaries for the teachers?
$200,000.00 is a hefty salary.
That alone is outrageous.
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez (sp) took a more egalitarian approach to divvying up monies in her budget by more evenly among her staff. Not a bad model for remunerations for the employees of Princeton public schools.
What are the criteria for paid leave of absence? Please explain paying someone who voluntarily resigns especially in October – so early into the school year. Furthermore the quality of her performance appears to be less than stellar.
Why are the taxpayers paying for a 10 month leave of absence when she is voluntarily resigning from her position? Why would the board vote to approve this? Wouldn’t this money be better spent educating our children??
Nobody actually believes this was voluntary or her idea, do they? I wonder what precipitated it.
Did the Dr. Kelley resign on her own? If so, why would the BoE have to buy out her contract? If the BoE asked for her resignation and negotiated a buy-out, why do it right before an election (instead of letting the new BoE determine her replacement)?
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Wow, it seems Superintendent Kelley is receiving a far more graceful exit than Principal Chmiel was allowed.
Frank Chmiel was offered a similar graceful exit but declined to accept it an instead made the choice to fight it.
Thanks, but not sure about that. Chmiel was ousted unceremoniously with only 3 months left in the school year, ostensibly because of things which had transpired well before that.
Here, we have a resignation with arguably-generous words from the BOE and a 10-month leave of absence to follow. Is this leave paid, with a salary of nearly $250K/year?
Transparency again seems to be in somewhat short supply here. I think people just want to be communicated with squarely.
Before he was put on leave he was offered a similar deal to take a leave until the end of the year. He refers to this in one of his statements. In the end he decided to decline the deal for various reasons.
I think no matter how you want to slice it, this development calls into question the Board’s backing of her during the whole Chmiel affair – as well as on pretty much any of the debacles and controversies during her tenure…
Perhaps this most recent fiasco with the after-school care (thank you for your reporting) was the last straw.
Just like Mr Chmeil s’ personnel matters could not be discussed in detail on the internet without his consent , neither can Dr. Kelley’s. That’s against the law!! What’s allowed to be public is already public. What part of that is so hard to understand? For such a “brilliant” community, a lot of us struggle with the basics.
It’s obviously in the contract or I’m sure the board we elected would not have gone through with it. Do you not think that they would review it first before making it public?
A “graceful” exit? What does it really mean in Chmiel’s case?
He had the opportunity to have the same gracious exit. Others made it hard. Very similar to what you’re doing here 🙂
Finally. She did nothing good for this school. As a PPS alumni it was terrible to see what she did to the schools and how she treated people. It’s embarrassing that our BOE is this incompetent.
Once again, we the tax payers are getting screwed. I hope the BOE will explain the buyout of a resignation.
This is great news for Princeton’s families. I am disgusted with the BOE. Hoping for change on November 7th.
Your email was edited to remove defamatory/slanderous content.
I referred to the BOE’s own email and quoted from it directly.
The board’s email didn’t include claims you included in your comment.
Let me try again then. I noted that the BOE email thanks Dr Kelley for the “more effective and efficient administrative structure” she leaves in place and for her “exceptional personnel hires.” I’ll leave it at that.
Not Great news!!!! If she were of a different race I’m sure many of you people would say different things….
Thank goodness.. I bet this was a ‘forced’ resignation, where in exchange for her leaving she gets $$$ for the remainder of the school year…
She’s been terrible from the get go:
– unceremonious firing of HS principal
– can’t attend meetings because she’s in Cape Cod
– the debacle of after school child watch this year
– the disaster of the Dual Language program @Community Park
Also the controversies over the Math curriculum and the redacted Math report, which was covered here on PP…
As well as the prior principal hire at Riverside who was only there for one year.
I wouldn’t call DLI a “disaster” though. However, it’s hard to get right for all families concerned.
Thank you, Planet Princeton. A free and open (and fair) press is a pillar of democracy.
also
– attempted horrible math reform
school superintendents have the sweetest deals on the planet: in this example a year of paid ‘sick leave’ after doing a highly mediocre job pleasing no constituent (student, teacher, parent). why our glorious Board of Ed doesn’t wise up and stop offering these overly-generous contracts is a great mystery, one that the taxpayers can reflect on in advance of the next election…
This isn’t hard enough. Let’s badmouth her and drag her name through the mud…..because it’s impossible to disagree with someone without constantly hitting below the belt.
If anything, these last few months have said more about the hate that’s been hiding in our community this whole time.
Hate? No, just a hope for satisfactory performance from the superintendent of our excellent schools. I didn’t know much about her when she came on, but was really excited for her hire. However, learning more about the past, it sounds like there was also significant turmoil during her previous tenure in Oak Park. Did the BOE do enough due diligence?
And as noted in the article and comments above, there have been a series of debacles and controversies in our district since her arrival. Others to add to the list are all the external consultant/PR firms and travel elsewhere. Why should criticism or unhappiness with that be equated with hate?
Apparently there is also litigation over Chmiel’s departure, following his Donaldson hearing with claims of malfeasance and allegations of manipulation of the system to force him out. If there is truth to that (perhaps now coming out through the lawsuit we are not privy to), this could be another factor in Kelley’s exit.
@PPS Neighbor
What has been difficult for the community these past 18 months is that anyone who complained about Superintendent Kelley’s actions, was labelled a racist. It’s sad that an honest assessment of how Kelley was doing her job was torpedoed by personal slanders. I would have liked to have seen Kelley succeed, which could have happened if she had learned from some initial missteps. But when some of her supporters, including the husband of one of the BoE incumbents, made the discussion into one about race, that made it tough for her to change and for people to come together on finding a positive solution. I hope the Princeton schools now have a chance to start anew and the focus can be on the students and ensuring that receive a caring, good education.
@PPS Neighbor
What has been difficult for the community these past 18 months is that anyone who complained about Superintendent Kelley’s actions, was labelled a racist. It’s sad that an honest assessment of how Kelley was doing her job was torpedoed by personal slanders. I would have liked to have seen Kelley succeed, which could have happened if she had learned from some initial missteps. But when some of her supporters, including the husband of one of the BoE incumbents, made the discussion into one about race, that made it tough for her to change and for people to come together on finding a positive solution. I hope the Princeton schools now have a chance to start anew and the focus can be on the students and ensuring that receive a caring, good education.
Superintendent Kelley deserves every dime for the shameless way some of the parents of PPS treated her. When you went low she went high. All the best to you Dr. Kelley. There is a school district more deserving of your talents.
Many people in Princeton wanted Carol Kelley gone from day one. Gee I wonder why? If she had a different skin color people would have given her the benefit of the doubt. Instead they tried to find fault with everything she did. She made missteps for sure. But the hysteria and vitriol in the parent group are something else. People make it an either or. Maybe both she and the high school principal were not a good fit for Princeton.
In the parent group other parents are mixing her up with the former Riverside principal or saying she was her lackie. Again blatant racism. Let’s face it, entitled Princeton parents are afraid that equity means their achieving children will have to give up some of their privilege for Black and brown kids. The community has treated Carol Kelley like the boogeyman. People wonder why Princeton has a harder time attracting good teachers and administrators than surrounding high achieving districts are able to attract. Guess what? It’s the obnoxious and demanding parents who make good people want to stay far far away from precious Princeton.
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