OXFORD – The contract of Oxford Superintendent Randall Squier has been extended again.

Monday night, the Oxford Academy and Central School District’s board of education voted to extend the superintendent’s contract through Sept. 1, 2013. The decision was made at the end of a meeting which lasted more than six and a half hours – five of which were spent in executive session.

In the end, one vote determined the outcome: that of outgoing School Board President Robin DeBrita. The meeting marked the last in DeBrita’s 12-year career on the board, following her defeat by Joe Spence in the May 18 school board election. Spence received 538 votes in the election to DeBrita’s 108.

Before DeBrita cast the deciding vote, the board had been split with Mary Branham and Gene Rood voting in favor of adopting the resolution to extend the contract and Peter Heggie and Dawn Golden opposed.

Heggie said he was “disappointed” with the result of the vote.

“I personally would have liked another year to evaluate (the superintendent),” he reported, adding that he had lobbied hard behind closed doors to convince the board to hold off on taking action.

Community members had taken the opportunity to weigh in on the topic earlier in the meeting, during the first of two public comment periods on the agenda.

McDonough resident Fred Bateman was the first to rise, reading a prepared statement he had already provided to the board.

Referencing a petition turned in last July bearing the signatures of 585 district residents which asked the board to refrain from renewing Squier’s contract, Bateman asked the board not to take any action on the superintendent’s contract which would be binding on the next board.

“The commissioner of education has ruled that such an action by an outgoing board is legal but ‘undemocratic,” he said.