Hoboken schools superintendent installed as superintendent of Wayne schools

HOBOKEN — After a three and a half years leading the Hoboken public schools, Schools Superintendent Mark Toback was named superintendent of the Wayne public schools by the Wayne Board of Education on Thursday night. He starts there on Aug. 11, according to the Record.
Hoboken had experienced frequent turnover in superintendents until Toback’s stewardship.
As Gov. Chris Christie has put a cap on salaries for superintendents, there is not often a huge monetary advantage in hopping from district to district. Toback will earn the maximum $177,000 per year in the new district.
According to an article, “Toback said he’s looking forward to moving to a larger district. Wayne has about 8,500 students compared with Hoboken’s 2,500.”
Toback has been in the middle of several controversies while at the helm. In the past year, members of the KIds First school board majority, who are allied with Toback, opposed the expansion of a dual-language charter school in Hoboken. Toback and members of the board majority have spoken out against the charter school funding formula and issues related to charter schools in Hoboken, including saying that the schools end up causing some racial segregation in Hoboken. However, the other public schools also have notable demographic differences.
Toback was also at the helm in 2011 during a controversy over whether to give tenure to a popular theater teacher.
Toback’s supporters say there have been improvements in test scores and curriculum during his tenure. In fact, Toback issued a letter on the district website this year saying, in part:
“I am thrilled to announce that this year, 93% of our students were proficient on the language arts literacy section of the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA). This result is, by far, the best we have achieved on the HSPA in a very long time—and maybe the best HSPA scores ever achieved in this district. Although our scores remained flat in the area of mathematics, we were able to match our 61% proficiency level from last year—still the highest mathematics proficiency percentage achieved in this district for quite some time.”
The Hoboken Board of Education will meet this coming week.
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