BRUNSWICK

Former Brunswick High School Principal Art Abelmann will be paid the remainder of his first year’s $96,000 annual salary. But the second year of his contract was terminated, and there is no settlement payment, officials said Thursday.

Abelmann’s abrupt resignation, accepted by the Brunswick School Board on Wednesday, came after a similarly hasty departure from his most recent post as high school principal in the wealthy resort town of Aspen, Colo., where Abelmann collected $30,000 on his way out the door.

Questions continue to swirl around Abelmann’s departure.

Citing the resignation as a legally shielded “personnel matter,” school officials, administrators and board members refused to comment Thursday beyond confirming Abelmann’s resignation and that he would be paid the remainder of his $96,000 salary through the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

No details have been acknowledged other than the resignation was “for personal reasons,” also the stated reason for his departure from Aspen.

Assistant Superintendent Greg Bartlett fielded a barrage of phone calls from the media Thursday, but deferred many of the questions to Superintendant Paul Perzanoski. The superintendent — who left for a holiday weekend vacation — is not due to return until Tuesday, May 28.

Other than Abelmann’s continued payment through the end of the school year, no settlement is expected, Bartlett said.

Attempts by The Times Record to reach Abelmann, a Topsham resdient, were unsuccessful Thursday; he has no local address or phone listed. One address and two phone numbers are registered to Abelmann in Laconia, N.H. However, one phone number was out of service and calls placed to the other went unanswered.

Abelmann was popular with many students and parents. He greeted students at the school doors in the morning, organized “roundtable” discussions and welcomed parents and students to attend with questions or concerns. Students said he regularly visited classrooms, went to games and made efforts to interact with them on a regular basis.

The mother of a current sophomore and an incoming freshman said his informal, unconventional style won him favor with students but was off-putting to some teachers.

“I can only speak to the issue as a parent,” she said, “but my daughter was comfortable going to him if she had an issue. But this shows that if somebody really wants somebody else gone, all they have to do is put one poison drop in the well.”

The woman spoke only on the condition of anonymity because, she said, she didn’t “want my children to face retaliation” from staff and administrators.

However, she is concerned that so little information about Abelmann’s resignation was released, and says the odd timing only heightens unease about the reasons for it.

“My hope is that there isn’t anything about him that is illegal or immoral, because I’m sad to see him go,” she said.

“I really hope it that he is an upstanding guy and it’s just a case of somebody coming up against a system that doesn’t like change, and that it’s not something else,” the parent said. “Because if it is, then I’m really going to feel bamboozled, because I thought he was going to be really good for the kids.”

Abelmann’s resignation is the second time in two years he’s left a job as a high school principal not just before the end of his contract, but before the end of the school year.
He left his former post at Aspen High School just 16 months into a two-year contract, also under vague or mysterious circumstances.

Perzanoski said in May 2012 that his sense of Abelmann was “very genuine” and that Brunswick would be a good fit him.

No word yet has been received from the school board regarding formation of a search committee to find Abelmann’s replacement. But one will have to be formed soon, as Assistant Principal — and interim principal — Donna Borowick is scheduled to retire at year’s end.

School board member Corinne Perreault, who served on the board at the time Abelmann was selected, again declined a request Thursday to describe what the panel knew about Abelmann’s work history when hired in Brunswick.

In an email. she referred all questions to School Board Chairman Jim Grant, who Thursday said he had “no knowledge” of the circumstances surrounding Abelmann’s resignation.

The Times Record was preparing documents Friday to request information on Abelmann’s hiring, as well as an internal investigation undertaken this winter of Abelmann’s conduct, under the state’s Freedom of Access law.