Cheltenham will pay more than $266,000 to the superintendent who resigned amid football scandal

The Cheltenham School District will pay more than $265,000, plus compensation for sick and vacation time, to former Superintendent Brian Scriven, who resigned last month amid outcry over the district’s handling of alleged assaults in a football locker room.

Under a settlement agreement the Cheltenham school board unanimously approved Tuesday night, Scriven will get $266,884.60 — a little less than the $270,000 annual salary the district had agreed to pay him under a five-year contract that took effect July 1.

He will also receive payment for “earned but unused vacation leave, sick leave and personal leave,” according to the agreement.

Asked what the amount of that payment would be, school board president Leah Mulhearn said in a statement earlier Tuesday that Scriven’s “separation agreement and general release follows Pennsylvania Public School Code, and the settlement is standard.”

“We appreciate Dr. Scriven’s service to Cheltenham schools, and we look forward to the coming year with Dr. Christopher McGinley now in place as interim superintendent,” Mulhearn said.

Scriven resigned Aug. 6, a week after Montgomery County prosecutors announced charges against four Cheltenham football coaches and six players in connection with two assaults the year before on a teammate in a high school locker room.

Prosecutors said the players had stomped on and poked a broomstick toward the buttocks of their 15-year-old teammate during the August and September 2025 assaults, while coaches later instructed the teen not to tell his parents what had happened.

But prosecutors also faulted the district, describing its investigation into the incidents — one of which was filmed and circulated in the school community — as flawed from the start. The district, which canceled last year’s football season in October, also came under fire from other parents with safety concerns, including at Cheltenham Elementary School, where parents said the district had failed to adequately respond to assaults by students.

Scriven, a 1983 Cheltenham graduate, was tapped as Cheltenham’s superintendent in fall 2021 after working in Baltimore County Public Schools.

He had received a new five-year contract in December, and the school board had voiced support for his leadership in May.

In resigning last month, Scriven said that the last year had “tested our community in ways none of us anticipated,” and that he had “come to believe that the district is best served by a fresh start under new leadership.”

Before the board vote Tuesday, Daniel Schultz, a school board member, said the settlement with Scriven followed “a lot of thought and discussion around what the options were and what the trade-offs were.”

“A severance agreement is not a performance evaluation,” Schultz said. He called the agreement “necessary to allow our district to move forward, heal and rebuild.”

The school board last month hired McGinley, a veteran administrator and former Cheltenham superintendent, to serve as interim superintendent this year. It also commissioned an outside lawyer to review its policies and the grand jury’s findings.

In a report at the start of Tuesday’s meeting, McGinley said the district had made “some important changes in practice” as the new school year began, “all focused on ensuring students are safe, supported, and inspired academically.”

Among other changes, he said the district had been “revising the overall administration of high school athletics,” and training coaches on “new protocols for locker room monitoring.” The district also “enhanced” training for coaches on policies for mandated reporting of suspected child abuse, as well as student discipline, McGinley said.

Football coaches were not supervising players in the high school locker room last year, according to the grand jury report, which also said that five coaches lacked clearances related to mandated reporting requirements.

McGinley said the district had also installed new building access management systems, reorganized its reporting and supervision structure for school security personnel, and added a new dean of students position “for enhanced supervision and follow-up.”

But, McGinley noted, there are “many issues that still require attention.” The outside review of district policies is ongoing, and the district is still working to implement recommendations from the Center for Safe Schools for improving building security, he said.

The proposed settlement agreement with Scriven specifies that the former superintendent would make himself available to consult with the district on legal matters, and would be paid if the time spent exceeds 40 hours. If Scriven is named as a defendant and legal representation is provided by the district, however, he would not be compensated for time spent, the agreement says.