UPDATE: Roxbury BOE Approves O'Neill as Interim Superintendent

Annette Brooks, the president of the Roxbury Board of Education, said she is "very, very excited" that the board appointed Jim O'Neill as the interim superintendent for the Roxbury School District, effective Tuesday.

O'Neill served as the superintendent for the School District of the Chathams for nearly eight years. He stepped down in June after Gov. Chris Christie passed a salary cap on superintendent salaries that would have amounted to a pay cut of approximately 20 percent for O'Neill.

"I really wasn't ready to retire, so I'm glad the opportunity came up and the timeframe works for me," O'Neill said. "I get to work with another set of educators and hopefully we can do some good things for the district.

"Once they did the interview it happened pretty quickly," O'Neill said. He said he sent his resume in around the beginning of August.

O'Neill spent Monday meeting the educators in Roxbury before the Board of Education voted Monday night.

According to the Roxbury Board of Education agenda, O'Neill will receive a salary of $644 per day with no benefits. If approved, the contract would end on Feb. 29, 2012. O'Neill said the board will decide by December whether they wish to extend his contract through the end of the academic year.

Michael Rossi had been Roxbury's superintendent since 2008 before becoming Madison's chief of schools this year.

"My goal at this point is to hope that my skills, my experience, are a good match for what they need" and to "help them find a new superintendent," O'Neill said.