HILLSBOROUGH – The Hillsborough Township Public Schools will have a new voice serving as its superintendent of schools entering the 2022-23 school year.
Daniel Fishbein, who has been a superintendent in the school districts of Glen Ridge, Pascack Valley and Ridgewood, was unanimously voted in by the Hillsborough Board Education (HBOE) on Aug. 22 to become the new Hillsborough Township Public Schools (HTPS) interim superintendent of schools.
Fishbein becomes the fourth superintendent the school district has had since 2019 and the third since the start of the 2021-22 school year. He takes over for Kim Feltre, who held the position of acting superintendent of schools following the departure of former superintendent Lisa Antunes in January.
Feltre will return to her previous position as assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for HTPS.
The departure of Antunes came on the heels of an investigation by the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office into former Business Administrator/HBOE Secretary Aiman Mahmoud, who resigned from his position in the school district on Dec. 20, 2021.
The investigation into Mahmoud and the school district’s finances by the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office is still ongoing, said HBOE President Paul Marini at the board meeting.
Antunes went on a four-month sabbatical following the resignation of Mahmoud and then submitted her letter of resignation as superintendent of schools in April.
The hiring of Fishbein will not halt Hillsborough’s search for a new full-time superintendent of schools, Marini said at the board meeting.
On June 27, the school district began the superintendent recruiting phase with the help of search firm Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates, based in Illinois.
Currently, the school district has around 50-60 qualified applicants they are looking into for the superintendent position, Marini said.
We’ve had a very, very fruitful search, he said. “We have a very large number of diverse candidates that have applied. We’re very excited that it’s moving forward and it’s working as well as it has.”
The next step in the process will be to whittle those numbers down and begin interviewing the remaining applicants in the coming months, Marini said.
He added that the board hopes to name a new superintendent of schools by the end of this year.
