Dominic DiFazio, who spent the last two weeks in the Adult Correctional Institutions, changed his plea on a domestic assault charge to no contest on Wednesday and then resigned from the Westerly School Committee.

The 41-year-old contractor, who does home remodeling and repair, was arrested on May 6 at his home, on Valley Drive in Westerly, after his wife, Celeste, also 41, told police that he rolled over in bed, struck her in the face and told her to shut up.

He was ordered held without bail on the simple assault charge, which is a misdemeanor, because he has been on probation since he entered an Alford plea to an unrelated charge in February. (By entering an Alford plea, DiFazio did not admit guilt but conceded that a jury might find him guilty if the case went to trial.)

The earlier charge stemmed from a complaint that he had taken $2,761 to install windows in a house on Pierce Street but never did the work.

In January the District Court issued a not-guilty filing for him in a bad-check case involving $779 that he owed to A-1 Rolloff Disposal in Warwick. He had already paid what he owed to the plaintiff, and the court ordered him to pay $100 to a victim compensation fund and to stay out of trouble for a year or he could face the charge again.

On Wednesday he was taken to District Court, Wakefield, from the ACI’s Intake Service Center for a disposition hearing on the domestic assault charge and a probation violation hearing. He changed his plea from not guilty to no contest. He was given a one-year suspended sentence and a year’s probation and was ordered to attend batterers’ intervention classes, undergo psychological counseling and alcohol counseling with screening tests and to have no contact with the victim, his wife, for a year.

He is staying with his parents, on Pierce Street.

Michael Healey, spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said yesterday that DiFazio got a fair sentence.

“The bare-bones condition of any probation is you’ve got to stay out of trouble,” said Healey. “If you don’t, then you’ve obviously got to be kept accountable. We think that the sentence he got keeps him accountable and is the same sentence anyone in his position would have gotten.”

DiFazio left the courthouse in Wakefield after signing documents and paying $118.50 ($30 to victim indemnity; $60 to probation and parole; $25 to domestic violence; and a $3.50 misdemeanor fine).

DiFazio’s lawyer, Michael P. Lynch, faxed the following letter to School Committee solicitor William A. Nardone:

“Please accept this letter as my resignation effective immediately of my position as an elected member of the Westerly School Committee. Thank you, very truly yours, Domenic DiFazio”

Nardone said the School Committee met in closed session unrelated to DiFazio at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday but he waited until the open session began at 7:30 p.m. to read the letter. Nardone said he also reported that the Town Charter requires the council to appoint a replacement for DiFazio.

“Whoever gets appointed fills the slot until the next regular election,” Nardone said.

Four seats on the seven-member board will be filled in the November election “and the fifth-highest vote-getter will fill [DiFazio’s] slot for two years,” Nardone said. DiFazio was elected in 2006 and his term expires in 2010.

The board will be seated once the election is certified, Nardone said, and the members will elect a chairman.

The four members whose terms expire in 2008 are Nancy Burns-Fusaro, Scott A. Bavasso, Margaret E. Stewart and James Murano Jr.

Speaking as chairwoman of the School Committee, Burns-Fusaro said she was “very, very relieved” that DiFazio had resigned. “It’s been a distraction and a concern, and now we can get on with the difficult work that’s ahead of us.”

She said the committee had to cut 40 positions Wednesday night, including 16 teachers and 19 assistants, to find almost $2.5 million in reductions from a $49-million school budget.

“It’s hard so I’m hoping the council will appoint somebody soon so we can then be a full working committee,” she said.

“You need to have the full seven people to make the decisions, to bring the different perspectives,” she said yesterday. “This has just been a really thorny situation — a black eye for the committee.”

dnaylor@projo.com