Part I - The Hysterics Over Board President

Part I - The Hysterics Over Board PresidentPhoto bycanva

With declines in proficiency firmly evidenced, two years of an assault democratic mechanisms, and an 11th-hour attempt to prevent a new BOE from delivering on its promise to improve the District, former BOE representatives and operatives within local government loyal to the Old BOE became obsessed with ensuring Angela Penna became BOE President.

A former BOE vice president who voted for and oversaw a reconfiguration that did in fact, throw the District into a crisis that upended its teaching staff, created significant transportation concerns, and rewarded a disastrous Superintendent who implemented an approach to Math that exploded into backlash , believed that she had the credibility to write the following about a new BOE that was barely into it's first month:

Dysfunctional is likely a word that may come to mind. And despite a certain local social media platform insisting that all this public "discussion" and conflict is somehow a good thing, I assure you it is not. It is not a good thing for our District's reputation or staff morale, and it certainly does nothing to drive educational excellence and improved student outcomes in our town. Source

Of course, I responded to this hilarious fairy tale.

We later found out, of course, that Ms. Penna would step down from her role as BOE Representative after a few weeks.

So all the political operatives loyal to the two machines in town decided to throw all their energy behind trying to make a former BOE president with an incredibly questionable track record the current BOE President even though she would not be serving for more than a few weeks.

However, the goal was probably not to have Angela Penna selected but rather to set up Gale Bradford for the appointment.

The Angela Penna circus was likely intended to give the illusion that the community was largely divided as to who should be BOE president, leaving the door open for the County Superintendent, appointed by a governor who received millions in dark money contribution from Teachers Unions to appoint someone with close ties with the Teachers Unions to the role- all to advance the appearance that he was achieving a middle ground.

So Ms. Bradford was appointed over Dipti Khanna who had more votes during the election they both ran in.

For weeks, an outsider looking in would think that the most significant issue within our District wasn't our misaligned budget or dropping proficiencies, it wasn't BOE members who used District Attorneys as their personal counsel in taking out political opponents, or a transportation policy that was never approved by the Board that gave some families free transportation while others had to pay $1000 for no rhyme or reason - our most significant issue was that a highly problematic BOE President that was about to resign anyway was going to lose her seat.

This may surprise you if you weren’t aware of how this machinery ruthlessly attempted to destroy Ms. Akiri’s reputation every step of the way the first time she was elected. This ethics complaint, which Ms. Stanley used tax-funded BOE Attorneys to facilitate, is now largely dismissed yet it is the only ethics complaint that made it to a local news outlet despite the majority of BOE members having far more VALIDATED complaints against them.

Now that the political houses no longer hold the majority, they are trying to play the same game from the outside.

I should mention that this was really just one of the tactics used in the very early part of this new Board’s term meant to obstruct members from their work to improve the District. During the January 18th meeting, there were clear signs that the old guards were dead set on making sure this new BOE did not succeed:

-Blocking Data connected to courtesy bussing the community had been asking for over two years that landed in yet another manufactured “crisis” surrounding transportation.

-Blocking a simple request for the Superintendent to clarify her resignation date that led to another manufactured crisis of “OMG we need to hire a new Superintendent right now!!!”

-Blocking BOE Members from the obligation to re-adopt policies which members of the old majority approved at the last minute to prevent the new BOE from accomplishing their work.

There is very much a circus surrounding our District and we should ask ourselves who the real clowns are.

Reach Out to the Berkeley Heights Board of Education

Subscribe to NJ21st For Free