New M-W superintendent ‘needs to understand the community'

Central Valley - Joseph A. DiLorenzo is the kind of guy who appears comfortable enough in his own skin to pause when he’s answering a question. It’s not so much that he’s looking for the right words, the words you might want to hear. No, it seems it’s just the way that the man who will take over as superintendent of schools at Monroe-Woodbury on Dec. 26 works things out in the conversation he’s having with you. DiLorenzo, the Port Jervis School Superintendent, has answered a lot of questions lately, beginning with those from School Board President Claire Perez and the other eight board members. And then there were the questions raised during his meetings with focus groups made up of teachers, students, parents, administrators and others that critical in the board’s selection process. For the first six months of his three-year contract, DiLorenzo said he will be engaged in a lot of conversations, following up on those conversations. “What I heard was that the superintendent needs to understand the community,” DiLorenzo said at a press conference Monday in describing what he called a nerve-wracking part of the interviews. “That this is their school district. That the superintendent must be accessible. That the only way to do that is to be out in the community, to be visible, to be available, to listen.” Perez said that the input from the focus groups was a deciding factor in the board’s decision. “There was a comfort level with Joe,” she said, “and that he could be comfortable with people.” The focus groups also told the school board that DiLorenzo was “a genuine person ... someone who could think on his feet ... and that he appeared to care about the kids,” Perez said. ‘Who, not where’ DiLorenzo is Monroe-Woodbury’s second superintendent since Terrence Olivo retired three years ago after heading the district for more than a decade. Olivo was first succeeded by Frank Moscati, his longtime assistant, who retired this past summer. The school board’s searches for a replacement, while national in scope, both ended with local candidates. “The board’s focus had changed,” Perez said. “We became more experienced. And that experience taught us that it was not as important as where the candidate came from as who the candidate was.” DiLorenzo’s local connections are these: He’s lived 50 of his 53 years in Orange County. He is a graduate of Newburgh Free Academy. Two of his three degrees are from SUNY New Paltz. He and his wife live in Walden, where the youngest of his three sons is a senior at Central Valley High School. He also won’t be a stranger to a school district operating under austerity budgets. Port Jervis went on austerity spending after its budget was defeated; Monroe-Woodbury is on austerity for the second time in three years. “It’s one thing for people to say ‘I can’t pay this amount of money in taxes’ and then vote a budget down,” DiLorenzo said in a subsequent interview. “It’s another thing, though, if people don’t understand the budget and how the community benefits from it and then the budget is defeated. “It will be my job to explain that budget, to show that every dollar has an educational reason behind it, that ever dollar has to go to support successful programs.” Perez described the new superintendent as a “fiscal conservative,” which he said meant working within an austerity budget where the focus remained the education of young people. Money, taxes and growth The dollars, students and staff he will oversee are more than twice what he has worked with in Port Jervis, even under austerity: about $117 million, 7,200 students and 1,200 employees in Monroe-Woodbury, about $48 million, 350 students and 500 employees in Port. And then there’s growth. More than 900 new students have enrolled in Monroe-Woodbury schools since the 1998. And, as Perez noted, there are more than 2,300 housing units either approved or before planning boards in Monroe and Woodbury, as well as in those sections of Chester, Tuxedo and Blooming Grove that send children to the district. These estimates, Perez added, do not include the 450 units in the Brodsky development in the town of Woodbury. DiLorenzo is curious about whether the anticipated growth will come in the elementary grades or in high school. It’s far too early to know, but it’s on his radar. His annual salary will be $175,000.