HARTFORD — Former Hartford Superintendent Tom DeBalsi will receive his full salary through June 30, 2025, despite departing a year before the end of his contract, the School Board announced last week.

Over 12 months, DeBalsi will receive $210,214.65 in salary and benefits, according to a severance agreement dated June 30 of this year.

He will also receive $2,214.96 for “cell phone and internet expenses,” and payment for accrued sick and vacation days.

In a news release Friday, the School Board did not include salary specifics, but stated that paying DeBalsi a severance equal to a year’s salary and benefits was “an appropriate recognition of his service to the district.”

It called the agreement an “amicable departure” that serves “the best interest of all.”

The board previously announced in a press release on July 3 that DeBalsi had tendered his resignation, but did not mention the financial terms of the severance agreement.

Curriculum Director Caty Sutton will serve as interim superintendent through June 30, 2025 for a salary of $160,000, according to her contract.

The effect of these moves — paying two superintendent salaries — is similar to the proposal the School Board had initially considered last winter.

In January, the School Board announced that it had hired firm MacPherson & Jacobsen to conduct a search for a new superintendent, with a plan to have DeBalsi work on “special projects” during the last year of his contract.

But the idea of the district paying two superintendent-level salaries in a year of deep budget cuts did not sit well with either the teachers union or the district’s administrative council.

“Paying two superintendent salaries is not financially responsible,” a February letter from Hartford administrators stated.

The $51 million school budget passed by Hartford voters in April eliminated the extra superintendent position as well as 22 teaching and staff positions, and four athletic programs.

So the board’s more recent decision to pay a severance, while paying an interim superintendent raised questions about the process.

“We are operating with an Interim Superintendent, an Interim Special Ed director, an Interim Assistant Special Ed director and possibly two new Curriculum directors,” Nichole Vielleaux, an officer with the Hartford Education Association and an interventionist at Dothan Brook School in Wilder, said Monday. “There is a new principal at (Hartford Memorial Middle School) and over the course of the last few years other Hartford administrators have left positions and have returned to teaching. All during a budget year when the district cut 24 student-facing positions and $168,000 from the athletic budget.”

All of this creates a “hole in leadership with no institutional knowledge,” which is “worrisome,” Vielleaux said.

Linda Saturley, the new Hartford Education Association president and daughter of School Board member Nancy Russell, said Sunday the HEA “does not have an official comment at this time.”

Neither School Board Chairman Kevin “Coach” Christie nor other members of the School Board responded to requests for comment by deadline.

Severance agreements are sometimes made when a school district wishes to end an employment relationship with a superintendent before the expiration of the contract and without just cause.

“If there is a parting of ways that was not in accordance with the employment agreement, sometimes there is a severance,” Jeffrey Francis, executive director of the Vermont Superintendents Association, said Monday. “But that is not all that common.”

In January of this year, the Claremont and Unity school boards terminated the employment of Superintendent Michael Tempesta more than two years before the end of his contract. Tempesta received a severance package equal to six month’s salary and benefits, according to his contract.

“Had the district waited a year, it would still have faced the prospect of negotiating a severance for Mr. DeBalsi,” Friday’s press release from the Hartford School Board stated.

The announcement did not explain why such an agreement would accompany the routine conclusion of a superintendent’s contract.

If a contract is completed and a superintendent chooses not to return, a severance package “would be highly unusual, because it’s the end of an employment term,” Francis said Monday.

The timing of the decision by the board and DeBalsi to part ways has at times been ambiguous. The most recent board meeting took place on June 12, and no decisions were made public regarding Mr. DeBalsi’s employment, the hiring of an interim superintendent, or the creation of a search committee at that meeting.

“I was authorized to do this work on behalf of the board,” Christie said in a July 3 phone interview. “The board authorizes the chair to act on its behalf in matters of this sort.”

No public vote of the board to delegate responsibility on its behalf to Christie is recorded in the minutes of recent School Board meetings.

Because DeBalsi did not submit a letter of resignation, and because there is no record of a discussion or vote in public meeting, it is unclear when, exactly, the decision was made to truncate his contract.

“I plan to serve as Hartford School District’s superintendent until June 2025,” DeBalsi said in a June 20 email.

Then in a July 3 email he said that he “felt this was a good time to make a change.”

The School Board delayed access to the severance agreement, stating that was a confidential document.

“We are bound by a confidentiality agreement with Tom,” Christie said in a July 12 phone interview.

Although negotiations between superintendents and School Boards may occur in non-public sessions, any contract emerging from those negotiations is a matter of public record.

“Once that is an executed agreement it is accessible to any member of the public, including the press,” Francis said.

The severance agreement, dated June 30, was ultimately released nearly two weeks later last Friday afternoon by Jacob Vezina, the district’s finance director.

The Hartford School Board has reached out to MacPherson & Jacobsen about resuming the superintendent search that was put in hold in March.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.

CORRECTION: The total amount in salary and benefits that the Hartford School Di  strict will pay to former Superintendent Tom DeBalsi under his June 30 separation agreement is $210,214.65. A previous version of this story misstated the amount of the separation payment.