In yet another twist to the flip-flop School Board elections fiasco, the Board of Education this evening voted to once again switch back School Board elections to November, joining nearly all of the State of New Jersey’s School Districts.
The fiasco started when the State allowed for Elections to be held in November together with Municipal elections in order to save the districts money. So Lakewood, like the rest of the County, initially voted to hold elections in November.
But the Board then flip-flopped, and voted to once again move the elections back to April.
The move, making Lakewood the only district in the County to keep the April elections, cost the district $60,000, according to Board President Carl Fink.
This evening, just week after hundreds of school districts across New Jersey held School Board elections, the Lakewood Board of Education again voted to move the elections back to November, joining nearly all other districts in the State.
The vote to move the elections was approved with 5-0 count, with one abstention. TLS.
the vote was 6-0 with 1 abstention
A sneaky way to lenghthen the time between elections by an extra 8 months .
This may nbe ilegal . They should have voted to do this so that we can vote this November . They are up for election in April ,they should not have the right to wait till Nov and then get almost an extra year . It will be challenged in court .The one behind this is obviously afraid of not getting reelected .
Give them 2 weeks they will flip it back.
Going back and forth back and forth sounds like a bunch of Smart people
If you recall the election was in fact changed last year but on a re-vote changed. If you would like to see the video it can be made available. It clearly shows one individual directed board members how to vote.
to -2 and 3, it’s the right move what are you so afraid that the public schools will be repaired properly? The public schools are in terrible shape because of previous board…. end of story
This is not flip flopping. This is a new booard.
If the board would have taken action on this prior to this past November election, the results would’ve still been the same, that the next boe election would take place in Nov 2013. The 2012 elections already took place in April. You don’t vote twice in one year for the same election.
to #8, your a 100% correct, thanks for clearing this up.
ILLEGAL, will be in court
This BOE is making a real posative difference. All of their programs are effective. They have much to do regarding contract analysis and the management of accounts payable. Serious control is needed.
A new audit, by an excellent auditing firm is helping the BOE to bring about necessary changes.
The Law Firm is also helping to restore integrity to the District.
The Transportation Department is exellent.
The partnership with GCU is on track and progressing well.
This is all great news for Lakewood.
Thank you, BOE and Administration.
A school board is just a board. They may exercise oversight, but by nature, they are not a single member executive entrusted with governance. Salutary governance requires “one person who receives the whole praise of what is well done, the whole blame of what is ill. . . . Boards, therefore, are not a fit instrument for executive business, and are only admissible in it when, for other reasons, to give full discretionary power to a single minister would be worse.” (John Stuart Mill, 1861).
This is our problem in Lakewood. To illustrate, m 2007, the Lakewood School District was under scrutiny for a one million dollar budgetary deficit. I was studying district financing as part of my certification to become a school administrator at that time. The interim business manager told me that the shortfall was because certain “[p]owerful people, with the support of the board, are demanding certain services and purchases without knowledge of business administration and budgeting.”
The district was running on an ad hoc basis because it did not have accurate data. I sent an email dated January 10, 2008 to the central office as follows: “Lakewood is busting at the seams. . . . [W]e have no cohort studies or anything even close to what we actually need. For instance, there are so many girls that have to go to school in New York because there is no room for them. . . . both boys and girls are struggling to get into yeshivas until September every year and only then are the true numbers known. We need the birth rate and housing starts. People from the outside do not know Lakewood and will not interpret the data correctly. Once we have accurate numbers of how many students need special services, busing, housing starts, birth rates, how many girls have to leave town since there is no room for them in the schools, we can make accurate projections.”
The divergence continues between the political people who know Lakewood and the organizational leaders with the power to provide for our general welfare. As a result, our elected boards spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on outside attorney fees rather than consulting a member of their staff who specialized in education law — already on the payroll; praise an administration for getting kids to wear khaki pants rather than brainstorming ways of promoting opportunity for the children of our citizens; and brag about saving $60,000 rather than finding the permanent solution for ourr state funding problem potentially bringing in $350 million dollars a year in equalization aid from Trenton. Mill was correct. Nothing grand can be accomplished when no one individual is in charge
Under the current leadership, the Lakewood School District is forging it’s way to unraveling and correcting the deceitful and illegal practices of the past.
General counsel, auditing firms, and a new Administration were required. The BOE made a major contribution to acquiring the services of these skilled and dedicated people.