The Rochester City School District will be looking for a new superintendent. Bolgen Vargas announced Tuesday he will be stepping down at the end of December, six months before his four year contact ends.
Vargas will remain with the district as a consultant from January through June.
The man chosen to lead the district on an interim basis, is former Syracuse and Utica school supt. Dan Lowengard. Vargas says with uncertainty surrounding his future with the district after his current contract ends, now is the appropriate time for him to step down.
His relationship with the school board was strained earlier this year when he sued the board over the move by its members to strip some of his authority for hiring and firing his top administrators.
Vargas expressed confidence in Lowengard, who does not want the job permanently.
Mayor Lovely Warren was critical of the timing of the shift in school leaders. She said that, "Although as Mayor I do not have a say in this matter, I do believe it would have been more appropriate to announce that the superintendent was leaving at the end of his term and allow him to serve until a permanent replacement is hired, since it appears he will be staying on as an employee until the end of the school year.
"A midyear shift could be detrimental to the very children that the school district needs to foster and protect.”
The head of the Rochester teachers' union says he understands why Superintendent Bolgen Vargas wants to step down now. Adam Urbanski says because of the uncertainty of Vargas' future, certain things were just not being accomplished in recent months.
"I think the responsibility of the school board is to either support the superintendent or to let him go, and for the last year or two they've done neither. And so the increasingly polarized relationship between the superintendent and the board of education has pretty much paralyzed the district."
Urbanski credits Vargas with accomplishing a number of tasks during his time as superintendent including substantially increasing music, art and physical education as well as making a big effort to increase student's learning time.
