The confusion regarding P.L. 1995, Chapter 125, commonly known as the "Rotondo Act," stems primarily from Part I of the Act which states that "[a] board of education shall renew the employment contract of a certificated or non-certificated officer or employee only upon the recommendation of the chief school administrator and by a recorded roll call majority vote of the full membership of the Board." (em-phasis added.) However, the Act goes on to state,
An officer or employee whose employment contract is not renewed shall have the right to a written statement of rea-sons for nonrenewal pursu-ant to section 2 of P.L. 1975, C. 13 2 (C. 18A:27-3.2) and to an informal appearance before the Board. The purpose of the appearance shall be to permit the staff member to convince the members of the board to offer reemployment. (emphasis added.)
Thus, the second to last sentence of Section I (hereinafter referred to as the "board appearance" sentence) at first glance, appears to contradict the remainder of the Act. This language seems to allow an aggrieved employee a hearing before the school board where he or she can attempt to persuade the board to offer reemployment, despite the superintendent's decision. We have analyzed the language and legislative history of the Act and have concluded that the Act does not in fact provide a board of education with the power to overrule a superintendent's decision with respect to the re-appoint-ment of school employees. According to the legislative history, P.L. 1995, chapter 125 was first introduced as a response to the Appel-late Division's ruling in Rotondo v. Carlstadt-East Rutherford Regional High School, 276 N.J. Super. 36 (App. Div. 1994). In Rotondo, the Appellate Division reversed both the Commis-sioner of Education and the State Board of Education and held that the local board of education was not bound by the superintendent's decision regard-ing the failure to re-appoint a music teacher. The Rotondo court noted that state statutes do not give a superinten-dent a controlling role in the process of appointing teaching staff members. The Rotondo court went on to state that its role as a court was limited to interpreting the law as written. It noted that, ".... the Legislature, the ulti-mate repository of public policy, has spoken on the matter. If a new answer is to be reached, it is the Legislature that has to reach it." Id. at 46. Shortly after the Appellate Division issued this invi-tation to the Legislature, bills were in-troduced both in the State Assembly and the State Senate which were ulti-mately merged and enacted as the "Rotondo Act." Thus, it is likely that the Legis-lature introduced and enacted P.L. 1995, chapter 125 in direct response to Rotondo and as a method of clarifying its position that a superintendent does have the final voice in the re-appoint-ment of teaching staff members. In fact, the Senate version of the bill (which was merged with the Assembly bill that ultimately became law) stated:
This bill provides that a district's chief school admin-istrator must approve the ap-pointment of any teaching staff member. Recently, the Superior Court in Rotondo v. Carlstadt-East Rutherford Re-gional High School District, Bergen County, (unpublished opinion) [later affirmed and published by the Appellate Division] held that there was no statutory authority permit-ting a chief school adminis-trator ultimate control over appointments of teaching staff members. This bill would clarify the legislature's intent in this regard.
Two major theories of statu-tory construction support this analysis. First, a legislature is never presumed to pass a meaningless statute; a statute that merely reconfirms the existing law is deemed to be meaningless. Therefore, the legislature would not have enacted the Rotondo Act if it meant only to restate the existing law. Second, as Justice Frankfurter stated, one should always consult "history" in construing legislation. In this instance, the legisla-tive history clearly supports the view that the legislature intended to reverse the effect of Rotondo. If the statute is interpreted to give the final say regarding teaching appointments to the superintendent, how does one reconcile the "board appear-ance" sentence of the Act? This sen-tence seems to contradict the entire effect of the preceding sections of the statute. The most likely interpretation of this section of the Act is that the legislature intended to provide an ag-grieved teacher with due process by allowing him or her the opportunity to "convince" the members of the board to offer reemployment. The superinten-dent would be in attendance at this meeting and the aggrieved teacher would make his or her argument to both the board and the superintendent. Thus, after a teacher's appearance before the board and superintendent, the board members and superintendent would at-tempt to reach a consensus regarding whether to offer re-employment. This interpretation is supported by the language of the law itself. The Act does not include words such as "veto" or "overrule" which would lead to the conclusion that a board had ulti-mate authority to reverse the superintendent's decision. Instead, the Act uses words such as "informal ap-pearance" and "convince" which indi-cate that the legislative purpose was to achieve a consensus between the board and the superintendent. If the legisla-ture meant to nullify the remainder of the statute, it presumably would have written, "the purpose of the formal hear-ing is to permit the Board members, by a majority of the full Board, to vote to overrule or veto the superintendent's initial recommendation." Since the Rotondo Act was only recently enacted, there are no published cases interpreting the law as of yet. Due to the ambiguity of the statutory language, these decisions could inter-pret the statute either way. However, we feel that based upon the above analy-sis, a court will be unlikely reach a conclusion contrary to the conclusion reached herein. Of course, our analysis is supported by the prior opinions of both the State Board and the Commis-sioner in Rotondo. It would be exceedingly unlikely for either the State Board or Commissioner to change course now.