HARTFORD — Hartford Superintendent Tom DeBalsi resigned from his position last week, a year before his contract was to end on June 30, 2025, the School District announced in a Wednesday news release.

Caty Sutton, previously Hartford’s director of secondary curriculum, instruction, and assessment, has been named interim superintendent. The School Board also announced the creation of a 13-member superintendent search committee, according to a Wednesday email from Jacob Vezina, the district’s finance director.

Sutton agreed Tuesday to accept the interim position, School Board Chairman Kevin Christie said Wednesday. Her contract is still being negotiated.

The move will allow DeBalsi, who has been Hartford’s superintendent for 13 years, to “complete his career as an educator, by returning to his roots as a teacher, which has always been his first love,” the news release said.

DeBalsi worked in special education and instructional support in the Mascoma Valley Regional School District and the Windsor Central (now Mountain Views) Supervisory Union before becoming Hartford’s superintendent in 2011.

DeBalsi did not submit a resignation letter. The decision was made as a “verbal request that took place just before the end of the fiscal year,” Christie said.

At its most recent meeting on June 12, the board held a non-public session “for the purpose of discussing the evaluation of a public employee,” according to the minutes. That session involved the routine evaluation of the superintendent, which takes place every June and did not include any decisions or actions, Christie said in a June 19 phone interview.

Asked whether he planned to leave his role prior to the end of his contract, DeBalsi in a June 20 email said: “I plan to serve as Hartford School District’s superintendent until June 2025.”

But in an email Wednesday, he reflected on his time in the superintendent’s office and his plans for the future.

“I have overseen many changes during my time as Superintendent, including steering our district through Covid,” he wrote. “I felt this was a good time to make a change and am looking forward to finding a position that will leave me with more time for family pursuits.”

He said he’s “enjoyed” his time as superintendent, but believes “it is a good time to bring on a new person with fresh energy and ideas to continue making innovations and improvements” in the district.

The School Board did not hold a special meeting to ratify DeBalsi’s departure or decide on an interim superintendent.

“I was authorized to do this work on behalf of the board,” Christie said Wednesday.

This has been a challenging year for the Hartford School District.

The School Board came under fire early this year for a plan to hire a new superintendent a year early, allowing the new administrator to overlap with DeBalsi’s final year as he worked on other projects.

Roughly a dozen district administrators walked out of a February board meeting after the board refused to allow them to read a letter objecting to the early search. The administrators took issue with the expense of paying two salaries. The district had originally budgeted $218,000 to compensate the additional superintendent.

The $51 million school budget presented to Hartford voters in April eliminated 22 teaching and staff positions, and four athletic programs, as well as the extra superintendent position.

Meanwhile, complaints of disruptive and sometimes violent behavior plagued the middle school.

In April, state testing revealed the presence of hazardous PCBs, in the high school and technical center buildings. The remediation of those spaces is likely to impact their use into the coming school year.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews. com or 603-727-3208.