NEWPORT — The School Board announced last week that it voted to put Superintendent Forrest Ransdell on leave for the remainder of his one-year contract, which expires June 30.
The discussion and decision regarding Ransdell took place in nonpublic session last Thursday, School Board Chairwoman Nikki Murphy said Tuesday. She declined to comment.
Ransdell could not be reached for comment.
The board’s decision came a week after Murphy and her husband, Mark, publicly criticized Ransdell at a board meeting. The couple expressed concerns about Ransdell’s communication with them.
“I don’t think it is fair how you spoke to me,” Nikki Murphy said to Ransdell at a May 14 meeting.
Newport hired Ransdell last year under a one-year contract, which the board did not renew. The Unity School Board hired Ransdell earlier this year to become the superintendent in Unity, which will become its own SAU on July 1.
Newport hired Richard Wargo of Rhode Island to become the new interim superintendent. Wargo, who is being paid $145,000 — the same as Ransdell — will begin the “transition” to Newport ahead of his official start date of July 1, the board said in a statement posted to social media last Friday.
Until Wargo begins, current Business Administrator Kate O’Connor will serve as the interim senior education official for the District, according to the board’s statement.
On May 14, during the public comment period of the School Board meeting, Mark Murphy said he and his wife attended a public forum with the two candidates under consideration as the next principal of Richards Elementary School.
Murphy made it clear several times he and his wife were there as parents and his wife’s presence had no connection to the School Board. Mark Murphy asked questions during the forum, but Nikki did not speak.
“I had some hard questions,” Mark Murphy said. “I wanted to know if certain aspects at Richards School were going to change.”
As a 10-year resident of Newport and a baseball coach, Murphy said he has heard “a lot of concerns about the direction of this district and the school.”
“In the process, I could sense frustration on the part of the superintendent on how I was proceeding,” Murphy said during the May 14 School Board meeting with Ransdell in attendance. “I want to be very clear, the questions I posed in that meeting came from myself. They did not come from my wife.”
Murphy said he felt “hostility from the superintendent.”
“He didn’t seem to like what I had to say about what I knew from parents and students about the school,” Murphy said.
The following day, Murphy said his wife received an email from Ransdell “blaming” her for the questions he asked. That brought him to the SAU where he said Ransdell “brushed him off.”
“This is troubling to me and I don’t think it was handled properly by the superintendent. I think it needs to be addressed,” Murphy said, adding that he planned to pursue the matter further with the state Board of Education. “This will not end here.”
Nikki Murphy spoke at the May 14 board meeting as a parent, reiterating that she did not speak at the forum and her presence there was as a parent of a first-grader. Yet she said Ransdell told her in a phone call and emails that her behavior was “unprofessional.”
“I was told multiple times in an email that I was unprofessional and my behavior was unprofessional when I didn’t even say anything. Yet he kept coming after me and I didn’t appreciate that,” she said. “If he can do that to me, who else can he do that to?”
After the Murphys spoke and the public comment period ended, Ransdell did not respond and the meeting continued with other agenda items.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
