Business administrators will be switching seats
Passiment to take post in county office; Wolf returns to Manal.-Eng.
BY KATHY BARATTA and MARIE CELANO Staff Writers
Apair of local school business administrators will be changing addresses in the near future.

Joseph Passiment, the business administrator in the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District, will retire from that position on Aug. 1 and join the office of the Monmouth County executive county superintendent of schools.

Passiment has worked in the Manalapan Englishtown district for 16 years. He will become the executive county school board administrator in an office that was created by state legislation last year.

Carole Knopp Morris, the retired Manasquan superintendent of schools, is the Monmouth County executive county superintendent of schools who was appointed by Gov. Jon Corzine. Among the duties of the office is reviewing the budgets submitted by all of the school districts in the county.

Passiment will retire from the Manalapan Englishtown district at a salary of $152,000. He will be paid $95,000 in his new position.

As Passiment leaves the Manalapan- Englishtown district, Veronica Wolf will be returning. Wolf was the district's assistant business administrator for eight years until she left in May 2006 to become the business administrator in the Freehold Borough K-8 School District.

Freehold Borough Superintendent of Schools Elizabeth O'Connell announced on June 23 that Wolf would be replacing Passiment in Manalapan-Englishtown.

Wolf, who could not be reached for comment, is a certified public accountant. She said in a previous interview that she was looking for a challenge when she came to Freehold Borough.

According to O'Connell, Wolf got that challenge and did a good job. She said it made sense that Manalapan-Englishtown school officials would reach out to Wolf upon learning that Passiment was planning to retire from their district.

"We hate to lose her," O'Connell said of Wolf. "She has done quite a bit for this district. When she came to us she was the right person for us and she certainly helped turn this district around."

Wolf will be leaving Freehold Borough, a district of about 1,400 pupils, to become the business administrator of a district which has an enrollment of about 5,500 pupils.

In Manalapan-Englishtown, Passiment's retirement salary figure of $152,000 reflects a 4-percent raise that was expected to be approved by the Board of Education at their meeting July 2.

In addition to the salary approval, the board was also expected to vote on the approval of a payout to Passiment that will be equivalent to his new salary ($152,000) as compensation for unused vacation and sick days that were accrued by Passiment during his 16-year employment with the school district.

Board President Anthony Manisero was asked why the board members would likely be voting to approve a 4-percent raise for Passiment this week rather than limiting the raise to 2.5 percent when they knew the business administrator would be leaving his position with the district.

Manisero said he has been aware for the past year that Passiment had been planning to retire from Manalapan-Englishtown and was seeking a position with the county school superintendent's office.

He said the raise that would be voted on was based on the excellent job performance evaluation Passiment received from the board in May, noting that Passiment had "gone above and beyond" in not only preparing the 2008-09 school budget, but in making appearances in the community to explain the budget.

"I'm happy for him. He's an asset, a valuable asset, and will be even more so at the county level," Manisero said.

In a statement commenting on his decision to leave Manalapan-Englishtown, Passiment said, "I have spent all but two years of my working career in education. I have worked for 16 years as a teacher in both New York state and New Jersey. I have spent the last 21 years as a business administrator. I have received many honors and awards over the course of my career in education and now seek to retire after 36 years and eight months and do something else. I leave the Manalapan- Englishtown school district in a better position than when I arrived."

Richard Vespucci, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Education, said Passiment's deal is a standard one.

Vespucci said although there was nothing to prevent Passiment from being paid by the county (i.e., the state) while collecting his pension from the years he spent in Manalapan-Englishtown, he will not be able to have pension funding drawn from his new position and his pension will remain based on his retirement from Manalapan-Englishtown.