The following announcement went out today indicating three staff members who will be leaving the District with Bolgen Vargas:

From:  Superintendent's Office
Sent:  Monday, December 14, 2015 2:11 PM
To:  Superintendent's Office <SuperintendentsOffice@RCSDK12.ORG>
Subject:  Update on Superintendent Transition

Dear Colleagues in Central Office and the Service Center,

On Oct. 27, I announced an agreement with the Board of Education to step down as Superintendent effective December 31st, enabling the Board to search openly for a new Superintendent while I remain available in a consulting role to support the transition.  (See note below.)

Since then I have been meeting regularly with Dan Lowengard, who will serve as Interim Superintendent beginning January 1st.   I am more delighted than ever that the Board has chosen Mr. Lowengard, an experienced educator who has served as Superintendent of the school districts in both Syracuse and Utica. He is a smart, talented and student-centered leader who I am confident will continue in an interim role to advance our District's priorities.

1. Student achievement and growth
2. Effective and efficient allocation of resources
3. Parent, family and community involvement
4. Communication and customer service
5. Management systems

As we prepare for the transition, I recognize that any new Superintendent needs flexibility to choose members of his or her top leadership team. With that in mind, I have decided that three members of my Cabinet will leave the District at the same time I do: Chief Financial Officer William Ansbrow; General Counsel Edwin Lopez-Soto; and Chief of Staff Patricia Malgieri.

These are leaders with strong experience from outside the education field whom I recruited specifically to address financial, legal and management issues the District faced when I became Superintendent. I want to thank each of them for the exceptional talent and hard work they have dedicated to improving our District and serving our children.

• Bill Ansbrow has played a key role in our successful efforts to strengthen District finances and the budget process. Under his leadership we have shifted resources to increase investment in the instruction and services that directly benefit children by tens of millions of dollars, while lowering our structural budget gap. In addition to his overall leadership of District finances, Bill directly oversaw the implementation of full-day Pre-K, which is now available to all city four-year-olds and will be expanded to hundreds of new three-year-old students in January.
• Ed Lopez has been an excellent leader of our legal department, representing the District skillfully in the negotiations and legal complexities involved in running a large school District. I appreciate his work to require metrics that demonstrate the value of services received from District contracts and to ensure that questions of employee wrongdoing are dealt with firmly but fairly.
• Patty Malgieri has helped to strengthen our management systems and improve customer service. Specifically she has led the expansion of our summer learning programs; driven the execution of our Facilities Modernization Plan; provided management oversight of our facilities, transportation and food service operations; and brought position management discipline essential to strengthening District finances.

While much of their work has been behind the scenes, all three have positioned the functions they lead for future success and helped our District to treat every child like one of our own. I thank Bill, Ed and Patty for their service as I look forward to working with Interim Superintendent Lowengard on a smooth transition to new leadership of our District.

Sincerely,

Bolgen

Justin Murphy reported on this in today's D&C article: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2015/12/14/vargas-ma...