NIAGARA FALLS SCHOOLS
Board OKs retirement of Granto, praises him
NIAGARA FALLS — The Niagara Falls School Board on Thursday night approved the retirement of 16-year Superintendent Carmen A. Granto.
Granto officially ends his 42-year relationship with the school district, where he started out as a social studies teacher. His last day on the job is Dec. 22, when school lets out for the holiday break.
The board also named Deputy Superintendent Cynthia A. Bianco, Granto’s sister, as interim superintendent, during the search for a permanent replacement.
Bianco, 64, a district employee for 42 years, said she may apply for the job.
“I’m thinking about it,” she said, noting her brother is 66 but started teaching in the district the same year she began her career.
Granto got a later start because, “I think he spent some time finding himself first,” Bianco joked. The brother and sister “tag-team” as member Vincent Cancemi described them Thursday, are not shy about teasing each other.
The board also approved a memorandum of agreement that specifies “the benefits due the superintendent and his spouse for their respective lifetimes upon his retirement.”
Board President Robert Kazeangin Jr. said the board approved the memorandum “to avoid any questions and misunderstanding in the future” about Granto’s benefits.
The benefit packages includes a fully paid state teachers pension based on the average money he made during his last five years in office, which included his $126,000 salary. In some years that salary was built up to about $200,000 a year because of unused vacation, personal and sick leave days he cashed in on because he did not take them off over time.
He is also is entitled to cash in 18 unused sick days and three unused personal leave days he still has that are worth $6,143. Granto said he cashed in the time he had coming at the end of each year so the district would not owe him several hundred thousand dollars in unused days off when he retired.
Other benefits to which he is entitled include a fully paid family health insurance plan that covers medical, hospital, dental, vision, prescription and major medical expenses for himself and his wife for the rest of their lives.
Granto said he will talk more about his retirement and the district at a board meeting in December.
Thursday, he said, “My greatest accomplishment is the fact that I’ve never had a young man or a young woman come to me in all the years I’ve been here and say that I treated them unfairly. Not one.”
Thirty-year board member Don J. King noted he had worked with five superintendents and that Granto was by far the best.
He praised him for his ability to do the “networking, negotiating and had the vision” required to make the district an excellent system for children.
“I don’t think we’ll ever see another Carmen Granto,” he said. “You’re a different kind of guy and we are all the better because you came our way.”
Other board members expressed similar feeling.
