City School Official Given $42,000 Leave

San Diego city school officials have agreed to pay a high-ranking personnel administrator more than $42,000 for an eight-month leave of absence while she attends graduate school.

The apparently unique arrangement has angered teacher union officials, who believe the administrator received a sweetheart deal, and the leader of the district’s administrators association, who says the woman may have been forced out of her job.

Supt. Thomas Payzant has refused to answer questions from the school system’s administrators association and individual principals about the fate of Toni Castellucci, who was the district’s personnel administration director until her leave of absence began Oct. 22, saying it is a personnel matter he cannot discuss. Castellucci has been employed by the San Diego Unified School District for 1 1/2 years.

Castellucci’s boss, assistant to the superintendent for personnel services George H. Russell, said Castellucci left the school system “on her own volition” and was not forced out or fired by Russell or Payzant.

But Irvin McClure, executive director of the Administrators Assn., San Diego City Schools, said Castellucci told him in late August that she was being pushed out of her job during a reorganization of responsibilities in the personnel department.

“This is saying to that particular employee that we’re paying you to fade from the scene,” McClure said Thursday. “That’s the only interpretation we can put on it until someone tells us differently.”

Castellucci, who was a full-time student in the education program at Claremont Graduate School last semester, could not be reached for comment. Her attorney, Richard Godino, said he could not discuss the matter until he contacted Castellucci.

“There’s obviously nothing particularly untoward” about the paid leave of absence, Godino said.

School system lawyers said Castellucci, who joined the city school system in February, 1984, is being paid at a rate of $64,092 a year ($5,341 a month) while on a leave of absence from Oct. 22, 1985, to June 30, 1986. Payzant, school board member Larry Lester, and Assistant General Counsel Jose Gonzales would not say whether she is returning to the school district or how the leave of absence was arranged.

The district has authorized no other paid leaves of absence in the last four or five years, said George Flanigan, certificated personnel director. Past sabbaticals for administrators were granted at half pay, and required the employee to return to the district or repay the stipend, he said.

Flanigan said he is unaware of any other fully paid leaves of absence in his 10 years as an administrator for the city schools. Russell also called Castellucci’s situation unique.

Russell said Castellucci’s leave of absence was arranged in negotiations between school district lawyers and Godino, adding that she requested the leave after he changed some of her responsibilities. Asked why she was being paid her full salary for a voluntary leave of absence, he said: “That is a good question. I think you have to ask the lawyers that question.”

But McClure said he believed Castellucci did not want to leave San Diego. He said she told him she had received a satisfactory evaluation in February, 1985, but by late summer was being forced out of her job.

McClure said the administrators association is angry about the official silence on the matter and what he described as an apparent attempt to circumvent the rules of due process in removing Castellucci.

The teachers union, meanwhile, is perturbed by the appearance of a “buy-out” unavailable to other district employees, said Executive Director John Felicitas.

Felicitas was critical of Castellucci and her department in the June issue of the San Diego Teachers Assn. newspaper.

Castellucci’s departure came about three months after the school district’s planning, research and evaluation division issued a report in closed session to the Board of Education on July 16 detailing shortcomings of the personnel administration department, which she directed. The evaluation was conducted after complaints by school principals, particularly about difficulties with the assignment of substitute teachers, said Paul Goren, one of the report’s two authors.

The school system’s report, which included criticism and praise for various aspects of the personnel administration department, quotes members of the department as saying that Castellucci and other top administrators “did not demonstrate management experience with and knowledge of large urban school districts.”

They were also criticized for failing to gain the “trust and loyalty of their employees.”

According to a questionnaire she completed for the district, Castellucci, 43, came to the San Diego Unified School District after 23 years as a teacher, counselor and personnel administrator in four other school districts. She had a master’s degree and was working on her doctorate in a joint program run by Claremont Graduate School and San Diego State University.