Joseph Hochreiter will be officially hired at Thursday’s school board meeting, President Vickie Smith said. If the board approves the three-year contract, Hochreiter will start June 1. The details of his salary will be in his approved contract.
Hochreiter has been on a leave of absence from the Hendrick Hudson Central School District in Westchester County since February, after disagreeing over a project that reorganized the elementary schools, he said. Some on the school board who voted for the controversial plan lost their seats, and the new board made it clear they wanted to undo the plan, according to media coverage of the district.
Hendrick Hudson had been facing hardship in recent years as the infamous Indian Point nuclear power plant, which is within the district, was decommissioned — resulting in a reduction in tax revenue. In December, Hochreiter said to News12 The Bronx: “The vast, vast majority of our residents no longer have children in the district and they are looking to us to make sure they are not taxed out of their home.”
But Hochreiter characterized the situation to the Times Union as a reorganization that also needed to happen because one school was crowded and one school was under-utilized — and the change would also make each school’s population more equitable. Hendrick Hudson had decided to break up the elementary schools by grade, not geography.
During the controversy over his district’s elementary school reorganization Hochreiter said he looked at the Albany schools, where a similar reorganization was happening at the middle schools. Seeing that the school board was willing to make a controversial decision and stick to it made him feel “comfortable” applying for the superintendent job, he said.
At the same time, the school board was impressed that Hochreiter had spent ten years as the superintendent of…
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