Robert Katulak, the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park school district superintendent, is retiring at the end of the school year.
Katulak is leaving the district after nine years as superintendent and 41 years in public education, according to a Sept. 8 letter he sent to the New Hyde Park-Garden City Park school board. Katulak’s last day on the job is June 30, 2017.
“I never went into the business to be a millionaire,” Katulak, 63, said in an interview. “I always went to be a minister or a servant to the students that we work with on a daily basis, and now it’s time to pass the reins on to someone who hopefully will continue the legacy that I leave.”
The district has started a search for Katulak’s replacement, and a committee will select one in the spring to take over on July 1, 2017, Jennifer Kerrane, the school board president, said. He was paid $235,642 in the most recent fiscal year.
Katulak has commuted 150 miles to New Hyde Park from Orange County, where he has lived since the 1980s, he said.
He sat on the Florida school board there for 10 years, four of which overlapped with his time as superintendent.
Katulak’s departure follows the hiring of new principals at all four of the district’s elementary schools after their predecessors left in June. They were also “baby boomers” who had worked in the district at least 10 years, Katulak said.
Katulak is well known in the community and has “done a lot of good things for the district,” Kerrane said.
“I do believe that he’s true to the district and has always done what was best for the students and the staff,” she said.
Before coming to New Hyde Park-Garden City Park, Katulak was an assistant superintendent in Rockland County’s North Rockland school district for seven years.
In his tenure, Katulak developed the district’s first long-term plans and implemented “differentiated” education techniques, personally training more than 100 teachers on ways to help students learn according to their individual styles, he said.
He also brought more technology to the district, putting interactive white boards in each classroom and laying the groundwork for a plan to give all students iPad tablets.
Katulak’s biggest challenge was navigating the state’s cap on property tax increases, which slow new programs and make negotiating labor contracts more difficult, he said.
“Now you’re very limited because you have that very narrow window,” he said.
Under his administration the district finalized current labor contracts with all its employees, including three groups who had been working under expired contracts for at least three years.
One trouble spot was a 2014 state comptroller’s audit that criticized the district for overestimating expenses by $8 million over three years and keeping too-large surpluses.
Katulak said the surpluses help the district’s finances and have been used as reserves for capital projects and other necessary expenses.
The district has hired a company to find qualified candidates for Katulak’s job, Kerrane said. A committee of administrators, school board members and others will choose his replacement from that list, she said.
“It’s a community collaboration,” Kerrane said. “It’s not just the board.”
In his letter, Katulak said he looks forward to spending time with his family, wife and son in retirement.
