By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice was given a 3 percent raise and a year was added to his contract Tuesday during a rare summer meeting of the Board of Education.

Scarice’s employment contract now extends until the end of the 2026-27 school year.

In 2023, Scarice was the highest-paid official among all Westport school and town employees, with overall compensation of nearly $335,000. He was hired as superintendent of Westport’s public schools in July 2020 after serving the preceding eight years as the Madison schools chief.

Finishing a performance review for the superintendent that was not completed before the end of the school year in June, the school board acted at a brief public meeting Tuesday afternoon at Town Hall following an executive session.

“The board believes Superintendent Scarice is doing an extraordinary job leading our district,” board Chair Lee Goldstein said in an email after the meeting, which was held without the usual livestream cameras.

Goldstein would not say if the evaluation of Scarice’s job performance touched on charges made during the last academic year by a number of parents that their children were subjected to racist and antisemitic bullying.

“No comment on what we discussed other than what I already said,” Goldstein said of Scarice’s evaluation.

Parents at several board meetings told the board they were unhappy with how officials handled the complaints.

In May, the board approved a new student discipline policy and, at Scarice’s urging, a new Code of Conduct designed to address a host of misbehaviors, including racial and protected-class harassment going forward.

Goldstein said the public session at Tuesday’s special meeting lasted all of 30 seconds. Five board members were in attendance: Goldstein, Vice Chair Dorie Hordon, Secretary Neil Phillips, Abby Tolan and Jill Dillon.

The vote on the raise and contract extension for Scarice was unanimous, Goldstein said.

 Scarice was also in attendance. There was no audience.

“I am incredibly grateful for how I have been treated by the Westport Board of Education and the Westport community over the past four years,” Scarice said afterwards in an email.

“The board’s support for our schools and my leadership is unlike any I’ve experienced in my 13 years as a superintendent. I look forward to continued success in the coming years,” he added.

Goldstein said no other changes were made to Scarice’s salary, which with the raise will increase the base pay to $321,661 for the fiscal year that started July 1.

The revised contract was not immediately available.

Scarice’s 2023-24 contract allotted an additional $5,000 to be paid into a tax-deferred annuity of his choice and awarded him a one-time bonus payment of $10,000 in January 2024.

It is unclear if that bonus is included in the new contract.

After becoming superintendent a few months into the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Scarice has won praise from town officials for budgeting practices and capital planning. 

He marshaled a strategic plan for the school district where the focus is on “developing well-adjusted students who can work together to solve complex problems.” 

The 3 percent salary boost is the same percent increase Scarice was given last year, and the same percent raise approved last month for Scarice’s cabinet and dozens of other non-union employees.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.