Renee Garrett

FORESTVILLE — The Forestville Central School Board is in the early stages of searching for a new superintendent who had been criticized by some of the new faces on the board of education.

Renee Garrett resigned as superintendent last week in order to accept a new position. Garrett had served as Forestville’s superintendent since January 2015, replacing Dr. Whitney Vantine.

The Forestville School Board met last week where things between Garrett and the board appeared to be business as usual. That meeting entered executive session to discuss matters of personnel. That gathering also served as the first meeting for new board members Lindsey Ellis, Derek Case and Jamie Hebner, as well as Amy Drozdziel’s first as board president and Andrea Spengler’s first as vice president.

Before the election, a group of parents and residents of the district, which was headed by Ellis, had a petition going around calling for Garrett’s resignation. The petition had a total of 428 signatures.

Ellis said the frustration with Garrett’s job as superintendent began with her salary, which has gone up every year since she started at Forestville in 2015. Any raise Garrett has received in that time has been approved by the Forestville School Board. Their concern with her salary coincided with what the group said was a very low wage for other school employees, including cafeteria staff and maintenance crews.

“Her pay has gone up every year, while the cafeteria workers make less than people who work at McDonald’s,” Ellis said previously. “Which is why they keep leaving, and kind of what started this. Multiple employees, teaching staff and kitchen staff have been fleeing in droves from the district.”

This spring before the school elections, the Forestville School Board extended Garrett’s contract through to 2027. That move may have contributed a larger than usual turnout at the polls.

During the May school election, Forestville had 537 residents cast a vote. By comparison, Fredonia had about 400 residents cast a vote and Dunkirk had about 560, both of which are much larger districts.

After Ellis won, she stated, “I hope all of us can work together on trimming some fat on the budget, A lot of people were upset it had the maximum allowable raise, so we want to get to the bottom of that. … It’s the board’s job to explain what the budget is. People want this information and we want to make it available.”

The next step for the school board will be finding a candidate to replace Garrett.

According to a legal notice advertised on the district’s website, the board is scheduled to hold a special meeting at 7 p.m. Thursday in the high school library “for the purpose of discussing the process for conducting a superintendent search.” The board is expected to go into an executive session to “discuss matters relating to the employment histories of a particular person or persons and matters related to the hiring of a new superintendent of schools.”

According to See Through NY, Garrett earned $139,416 as superintendent in 2020, the latest information available.

The next regular meeting of the Forestville School Board will be Aug. 4, at 6:30 p.m. in the High School library.