Burbank Resident Questions Paramo Resignation-to-Retirement Change

A Burbank resident is demanding answers from the Burbank Unified School District Board about a quiet but potentially costly reclassification buried in a routine personnel document: former Superintendent John Paramo’s departure from the district has been changed from a resignation to a retirement.

Jef Vander Borght, a Burbank resident and grandparent of two BUSD students, raised the question in a public letter this week, pointing to a personnel report presented at a recent board meeting. Tucked inside an 11-page document, amid 29 consent calendar items, was a line memorializing Paramo’s retirement, effective June 5, 2025. The problem, Vander Borght argues, is that Paramo didn’t retire. He resigned.

Paramo submitted his resignation on June 5, 2025, the same day the board announced what Vander Borght describes as the “Tabet scam,” a reference to a scandal that drew significant public attention at the time. The circumstances of that departure were not routine, and the distinction between resignation and retirement carries real financial weight.

Under BUSD policy, employees who retire from the district are eligible for district-paid medical insurance coverage until they reach age 65. Employees who resign are not. Vander Borght estimates that reclassifying Paramo’s departure to retirement will cost the district roughly $14,000 in the first year alone, with costs climbing annually as insurance premiums rise. Paramo is approximately 57 years old, meaning the district could be on the hook for about eight years of coverage.

Vander Borght’s letter asks a straightforward question that the district has not yet answered publicly: who authorized this change, and why?

“I cannot find anywhere where this is mentioned on any closed session or open meeting agendas,” Vander Borght wrote.

That transparency gap is central to his concern. A change that creates a new financial obligation for the district should appear somewhere in the public record. If the board voted on it in closed session, state law generally requires at least a brief public disclosure of actions taken. If no vote occurred, it raises a different set of questions about who made the decision and under what authority.

The timing makes the reclassification harder to ignore. The board reviewed it during the same meeting where it considered approximately $6 million in budget cuts. The district is laying off staff and squeezing every line item. Against that backdrop, Vander Borght questions whether the personnel report placement, deep inside a long consent calendar, served to minimize scrutiny.

Vander Borght also raises concerns about separate settlement packages recently approved for two former assistant superintendents, Cantwell and Rudchenko, which he says total around $800,000. He says both administrators were paid to stay home for roughly six months without performing work before receiving those settlements.

“Every unnecessary expense adds up,” he wrote.

For context, Paramo’s CalSTRS pension is entirely separate from this dispute. That pension is a state benefit controlled by California’s teacher retirement system, not by the BUSD board. Paramo will receive it regardless of how his employment ended. The question here is narrower: whether the district had a legal or contractual basis to reclassify his departure, and whether doing so created a benefit obligation that was never properly disclosed or approved in a public forum.

BUSD has not issued a public statement addressing Vander Borght’s questions as of publication.

The letter has circulated among Burbank parents and residents following a school year already marked by financial strain, administrative turnover, and the fallout from the Tabet matter. For many families, the combination of budget cuts and what appear to be generous exit arrangements for departing administrators is a difficult contrast to absorb.

The board’s next meeting will likely bring more questions from the public. Whether the district provides clear answers, including a full accounting of when and how the retirement reclassification was approved, will go a long way toward determining how this chapter closes.