According to both The Record and NJ Spotlight, seven executive county superintendents received a six-sentence pink slip last week telling them not to report for their $120,000/year jobs effective immediately. The counties now lacking ECS’s are Burlington, Cape May, Hunterdon, Ocean, Middlesex, Monmouth and Somerset. Technically they were not fired, just not renewed. Given that they are political appointments, insiders expect new nominees any time now.

The responsibilities of Executive County Superintendents are ever-evolving. Once not much more than figureheads, former Gov. Corzine expanded their responsibilities to include line item vetoes over school district contracts and budgets and, more significantly, authority to recommend district consolidation. That never panned out — regulations are such that even sensible mergers are non-starters — and the Christie Administration tossed all recommendations into the circular file.

Here’s a question: would we even need ECS’s if we had a functional and fully-staffed DOE?