Outside of Little League baseball it seems when Toms River makes the news in a big fashion it’s always something bad. Ocean County’s largest town has survived the negative publicity surrounding the infamous Marshall murder in the 80’s, the cancer cluster after that and now a public corruption scheme involving its longtime Superintendent of Schools Michael Ritacco. I will leave it for others to pass judgement on Ritacco, someone who I’ve known for more than 25 years and consider a friend. The charges are staggering and in good time we will know the full extent of the insurance scheme. However this morning I’m going to talk about the fact that the district and the town do need to move on.
Ritacco’s sudden retirement last night officially ends his 40-year relationship with the school district and allows the Board of Education to begin picking up the pieces and move forward. At a special meeting last night they were the recipients of criticism from the public for not “minding the mint” and allowing things to occur under their watch. Board Attorney Thomas Monahan did point out the federal indictment against Ritacco cited that all activities took place without the knowledge of the Board of Education. That’s not good enough for some, who have been vocal critics for years and now have something of substance to hang on to. Again there are plenty of others who will offer their opinions on the matter and
have a field day doing so but this needs to be a time when focusing on the future is even more important than dwelling on the past.
With that said the school board did name Frank Roselli as acting superintendent and he is the right choice to lead the day-to-day operations of New Jersey’s fourth largest district. Roselli started as a school psychologist three decades ago and served as a building principal before being named an assistant superitndent in 2002.
He has the respect of administrators, teachers and support staff and I believe will be able to rally the troops during what will be a tough transition period. Roselli will stay in the position until a national search leads to the hiring of a new superintendent and likely that will be at the end of this school year. He will have challenges and among his first orders of business is to settle a contract with the district’s teachers association who have been working without one. That will probably be a lot easier to achieve than restoring public confidence which is going to take time. For the sake of 17,000 students and more than 2,000 employees the district needs to pull together starting now.
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