New London ―Superintendent Cynthia Ritchie was given a one-year contract extension and a raise this week after receiving a glowing annual review by the Board of Education.

The board on Monday extended Ritchie’s contract through June 30, 2026, a reward for her work in improving student performances; promoting new classroom initiatives; stemming staff turnover; and “righting and correcting” long-standing issues in the district, according to the board’s evaluation.

Ritchie works on a three-year contract in which each new extension pushes its end date out another year.

In her evaluation summary, board President Elaine Maynard-Adams said a successful superintendent boasts certain key attributes, from personal and managerial skills to a “strong moral compass.”

“Cynthia, you have demonstrated you possess all of these,” Maynard-Adams wrote, while praising the superintendent’s “kindness, grace, integrity, honesty” and professionalism.

Under terms of the new contract, Ritchie will earn a base salary of $194,077, a 2% bump from last year. Maynard-Adams said Ritchie’s contract only called for a 1.5% salary increase.

“But we felt, in recognition of the good work she did – and continues to do – she was most certainly deserving of the raise and another contract extension,” Maynard-Adams said on Thursday.

The evaluation format used by the board is based on the Connecticut Superintendents Leadership Competency Framework, which scores a subject in eight categories such as the alignment of resources, student success and collaboration to gauge leadership effectiveness.

In crafting the evaluation, which covers the school year ending June 30, 2023, the seven board members met with Ritchie in small group sessions. One group commended Ritchie’s handling of the “continued fallout of child abuse and gross violations of ethics” committed by previous staff members before Ritchie was hired.

Corriche Gaskin, a former New London middle school employee who sexually assaulted two underage girls in 2016-17, was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2022.

A report released in October by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the school district failed to respond properly to reports of employee sexual harassment of students in the 2018-19 school year and later failed to ensure correct oversight and grievance procedures were in place.

School officials said the issues raised in the report have been addressed and no employees involved in the incidents work in the district.

Ritchie, a former assistant school superintendent in East Hartford, was hired in 2018 to succeed former Superintendent Manuel Rivera.

“Cynthia came in a week after everything blew up,” Maynard-Adams said. “So much of her early years involved dealing with the fallout, cleaning up messes and installing safeguards. It’s been a long way getting to where we are now with the building blocks in place for success.”

Another set of board evaluators praised Ritchie for quickly responding to the sudden closure of the former Harbor Elementary School and expansions to the district's pre-kindergarten and year-round schooling programs.

In regards to student achievement, board members celebrated reading performance improvements at the kindergarten level and middle and high school growth based on state metrics.

Ritchie was lauded for increasing staff diversity and cutting employee turnover by half, as well as being a “champion for the profession of education.” The district is home to this year’s state Teacher of the Year.

Ritchie on Thursday gave credit to her team of administrators and staff for helping the district keep a “children-first” focus. She said her early years in New London were marked by reactions, rather than proactivity.

“I’m so blessed by having such a strong team,” she said. “We’ve got that solid foundation now and we’re reaping the results of the hard work of the last five years.”

The board’s evaluation included a set of goals for Ritchie to tackle in the coming school year, including minimizing the budgetary impact of lost federal pandemic relief dollars; expanding post-graduation opportunities for students; and the creation of a long-term technology infrastructure improvement plan.

Ritchie said she plans to build on recent successes by continuing to court community partners and working to “uplift the profession of education.”

j.penney@theday.com