Last month during the June 25th Asbury Park Board of Education meeting, board members agreed to bring back former superintendent Rashawn Adams for at least a year as “Director on Special Assignment” at a salary of $192,345 plus benefits. Adams, district leader from 2021-2024, has been much in South Jersey news because in February 2024, almost two and a half years ago, the Board suspended him with pay after multiple complaints from staff. He continued to receive his $207,618 superintendent’s salary until his term ended this past June. Concurrently local and state taxpayers paid Acting Superintendent Mark Gerbino’s $209K salary (who took medical leave December and just retired), and his replacement, Acting Superintendent Edwin Ruiz, who was paid $177K.  Now we’ll keep paying  Adams as a kind of floating administrator for $192,000 a year as well as newly selected superintendent  Rashon Hasan, former superintendent of Plainfield and the sixth Asbury Park superintendent since 2018.* The Board has not disclosed Hasan’s salary but he was making $257,000 in Plainfield. 

This means the public has been paying for tiny Asbury Park (about 1,300 students, the size of some high schools) to have three superintendents at an annual cost of over half a million dollars. That’s not including the generous benefits packages. This is all happening while the district is in tough financial shape; it just laid off 31 staff members to fill a gaping budget hole. 

Why can’t Asbury Park get rid of Adams, especially after an independent report validated claims that he, according to the Asbury Park Press, used phrases in staff meetings like “these toxic white racist motherf*ckers,” derided “men of color for marrying a white woman” (an apparent reference to Senator Vin Gopal, who represents Asbury), and called women “heifers” and “bitches”? (Adams admits to using profanity but denies the use of “inappropriate race or sex terms,” except for calling women “heifers.”)

The answer lies in New Jersey’s tenure laws, which work except when they don’t. It’s more complicated than that — Asbury Park’s board is divided, has lost credibility and community support, and recent claims of student success seem more like wishful thinking than measurable progress. But, while superintendents don’t get tenure, the erosion of our tenure laws are still the reason why Adams will remain on payroll for some indefinite period of time.

New Jersey tenure law decrees that since Adams served in other administrative positions in the district — first assistant principal, then Human Resources Manager, then “Director of Planning, Research and Assessment” — and earned tenure along the way, the district can’t just fire him. Yes, he was suspended as superintendent but that means he gets to slide back into one of those former tenured roles. Usually that would mean bumping an administrator with less tenure (years served) or no tenure. But the board, apparently, doesn’t want Adams to be a principal or central office administrator so they created a title for him with duties that remain nebulous. 

School staff can be fired, even with tenure, after two consecutive years of bad evaluations** or “inefficiency or misconduct,” part of the tenure reform package negotiated by Sen. Teresa Ruiz during the Christie Administration. But, in one of many sops to NJEA,  the Murphy Administration reversed much of that progress,  which means calling women bitches and cursing a blue streak at school staff isn’t a slam dunk for losing tenure rights. At the same time, Adams is suing the board for various misdeeds, some of which are credible, like allowing students to use sham programs for high school credit to juice the graduation rate. And Asbury already spends a lot on legal services. It’s less messy to stick Adams in a sinecure and call it quits, even if it’s expensive.

What does this mean for Asbury Park students and their families? For starters, the board can’t focus on academics due to the distractions of fiscal pressure (despite a student allotment of $33,392 per pupil per year, the highest rate among similar districts) and the constant toll of finding new leaders. Student growth is stagnant: According to the most recent achievement scores, only 14% of students meet expectations in reading and 10% do in math. The dropout rate is 71%, 20 points lower than the state average. The state DOE does nothing.

Can Rashon Hasan, formerly of Plainfield, bring order to the mess that is Asbury Park and lead the district out of academic mediocrity? (Twenty-four percent of Plainfield students meet expectations in reading and 18% meet expectations in math, better than Asbury but nothing to write home about.) Can he strongarm the board and faculty into focusing on preparing a deprived student population for life after high school? Can he manage the decline of enrollment and attendant loss of state aid,  deal effectively with lawsuits, and provide suitable answers for parents like Nina Summerlin who, at that June board meeting, according to the Press, had this to say to the school board on the (re)hiring of Adams:

“At the end of the day I am disappointed in this board, again, that you guys would actually bring somebody back that did not take our children seriously the first time. Why can’t we leave the negative impact that happened in Asbury Park, out of Asbury Park.”

“You guys (the board of education) got rid of so many bilingual staff members this year and I hate to say this, but I pray like hell that you guys didn’t get rid of those staff members to bring (Adams) back to this district.”

You can’t blame Adams’ reinstatement for the lay-offs — the district’s expenses have exceeded revenue since 2018 — but New Jersey’s weak tenure system bears part of the responsibility for the mess that is Asbury Park Public Schools. 

*Asbury Park’s Superintendent Churn:

Dr. Lamont Repollet: Permanent (2014–2018)

Dr. Sancha Gray: Permanent (2018–2021)

Dr. RaShawn Adams: Permanent (2021–2024; suspended) 

Mark J. Gerbino: Acting (2024–2026)

Edwin J. Ruiz: Interim (Spring 2026)

Rashon Hasan: Permanent (Effective Sept 2026 – 2030)

**According to Asbury Park’s most recent QSAC evaluation (the state accountability rubric that awards points in five areas (explainer here), the school board was cited (among other items) for not evaluating the superintendent, one of the most important tasks of a school board. It is possible that while Adams was in his earlier administrative roles he wasn’t evaluated by his supervisors. That would leave the board with no paper trail to justify removing his tenure for cause.