Riverhead Board of Education to vote on hiring new assistant superintendent for business

The Riverhead Board of Education plans to vote on the hiring of a new assistant superintendent for business at Tuesday’s regular meeting.

According to the meeting’s agenda, Rodney Asse will be hired as a probationary appointment that would begin July 1 and run through June 30, 2026. He would begin with a salary of $190,000.

The appointment would fill the void left by outgoing assistant superintendent Sam Schneider. The district and Mr. Schneider reached a settlement agreement that the school board approved in January for him to receive his full salary through June 30. Mr. Schneider, who had been on administrative leave since October, submitted his formal resignation March 1. He was later appointed to an assistant superintendent position for business in East Hampton.

Faith Caglianone has served as the interim assistant superintendent of finance and operations and helped direct the district in planning its 2022-23 budget that voters approved last Tuesday.

Mr. Asse has most recently been employed at the Liberty Central School District, the same upstate district where current Riverhead Superintendent Augustine Tornatore worked prior to joining Riverhead. Mr. Asse resigned from the role of school business official at the March 22 Liberty school board meeting. The resignation is effective May 31.

Prior to that, he worked at the Newburgh Enlarged City School District from from October 2019 until his resigned 11 months later, according to a report in the Mid Hudson News at the time. He had joined that district after working as finance director of the Rochester City School District. A 2019 story in the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester noted a financial report from June 2019 showed a “massive budget problem” that city officials in Rochester described as “gross incompetence or a willful attempt to deceive.” Mr. Asse resigned from that position in 2018.

A report in Rochester First outlined some of the controversy that the Rochester City School District faced, which included a multi-million dollar budget gap, a state comptroller’s audit and a federal investigation.

Tuesday’s meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the high school auditorium and can be viewed online here.