After three of the four towns in a Deer Isle-area school district already voted to suspend their shared superintendent, the board overseeing the whole district unanimously voted Thursday night to place him on paid administrative leave.
Daniel Ross, the superintendent of School Union 76, has come under fire in recent months amid turmoil in the leadership ranks of the district, which consists of Deer Isle, Stonington, Brooklin and Sedgwick. Top administrators at the district’s schools have abruptly resigned in recent months, and staff at its four schools overwhelmingly publicly voted no confidence in Ross just before Thanksgiving.
Thursday’s 15-0 vote by the full union board to place Ross on leave is the latest sign that his career in Deer Isle likely will be over soon. The union board also voted to give its chair, Mike Sealander of Brooklin, the authority to reach out and negotiate with potential interim superintendents.
While the board held a closed-door executive session to discuss the situation, its members made no public comments about the vote, Sealander said after the union’s emergency meeting.
The meeting, which Ross did not attend, lasted about 25 minutes, Sealander said.
Ross has not responded to requests for comment over the past two weeks.
The first public sign that Ross was losing support from elected school officials came in August, when Ross contacted the sheriff’s department to report that local school board member Darrell Williams was disrupting a staff meeting at the high school, which is located in Deer Isle, according to the Island Ad-Vantages weekly newspaper.
Following the no-confidence votes by the school staff just before Thanksgiving, Ross’ lack of support became even more apparent when the joint board of Deer Isle and Stonington voted Nov. 27 to suspend him from his duties at the local elementary and high schools. Sedgwick’s board followed suit earlier this week, suspending Ross from his duties overseeing that town’s elementary school.
Brooklin’s local board had not publicly taken a position on Ross’ status until Thursday, when its members voted with the rest of the overall board to place him on leave.
Ross was serving as school superintendent for the town of Cherryfield in Washington County when he was hired two years ago to run School Union 76, according to the Weekly Packet. His tenure in Deer Isle, where his office and the district’s high school both are located, began in July 2022.
Before working in Cherryfield, Ross worked three years as a school principal at Woodland Junior Senior High School in Baileyville, for one year as principal at Penquis Valley High School in Milo, and held a dual role as assistant principal and athletic director at both Katahdin Middle and High School in Stacyville and at Southern Aroostook Middle and High School in Dyer Brook, according to media reports. He held the dual posts in Stacyville and Dyer Brook for 10 months, according to his LinkedIn page.
