Pauline Liu Times Herald-Record @PaulineLiu845

LIBERTY A special meetingwill beheld Tuesday so the Liberty Board of Education can vote on whether to terminate the contract of Superintendent Bill Silver.

"There is substantial support for this among the board members," school board member Marta Illing said Friday. "It is not being done lightly. But you'll need to come to the meeting to get the real story directly from the board. It is a public meeting, so we're going to vote in your presence."

The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. in the high school's media center.

The nine-member board will need a quorum and majority in order for the proposal to pass. Do board members expect there will be enough votes?

"I hope not," school board member and former board President Philip Olsen said. "I can't talk about a lot of it because it was discussed in executive session, but they didn't like the way that three incidents were handled in the middle school recently."

The three separate incidents, which all took place in May, involved a bomb threat against the school, a student who brought in a BB gun and a girl who came to school with a pocket knife, according to an informed source.

Silver, 66, was hired by the school board in January 2013. He previously served as superintendent in Killingly, Conn., and has 44 years of experience in education. He was given a three-year contract with a starting salary of $154,000, which was extended twice. His current salary is $164,655, and he has about a year left on his contract.

The school board has talked about offering Silver a buyout, which could run in the ballpark of $200,000. If an interim needs to be hired, it could cost the district as much as $750 per day until a permanent replacement is found.

"So we'll be paying two salaries and I'm not happy about that," Olsen said."Fiscally, Dr. Silver is wonderful and educationally he's been a very good superintendent."

Silversaid Friday he feels that under his leadership the Liberty district is now "in a pretty good place."

Liberty is one of the few districts in the region where the enrollment has continued to grow. It's now over 1,700.

"We have seen the graduation rate increase from 70 percent to 78 percent in the last three years and the last four budgets had a zero tax levy increase," Silver said. "There's still a lot of work to be done here, but we're in the right trajectory."

pliu@th-record.com

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Liberty schools chief Silver faces ouster vote - Times Herald-Record