Hoboken voters Tuesday will have the opportunity to elect three representatives for the nine-member volunteer board that oversees the city’s public schools.
Residents will also get to vote on the district’s proposed $49.8 million school budget (see sidebar). Duties for board members include managing that budget, negotiating contracts with teachers, and setting education policy for the schools.
The school system includes Hoboken High School, two middle schools, three elementary schools, and two charter schools.
The polls will be open from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.
For more detailed stories on the budget and candidates, check out last week’s paper or go on the web to www.hobokenreporter.com.
Incumbents vs. independents
Mayor David Roberts will be supporting the three incumbents – Carmelo Garcia, Frances Rhodes-Kearns, and John Raslowsky II.
They will be up against three independents: Anthony Romano, a Hoboken police captain; Francis Totaro, the owner of the Hoboken Watch Company; and small business owner Theresa Minutillo.
The issues
This is a pivotal time for Hoboken’s school district. A big task for school board members will be overseeing the large-scale school construction that will be paid for with over $100 million in state money in the next few years. The most current plan calls for the construction of a new high school, an elementary school, and athletic fields on a 6-acre piece of property near the now vacant former Cognis Chemical plant on 12th Street from Adams to Madison streets.
The six existing school buildings in Hoboken will be rehabilitated, except for the Demarest Middle School on Garden Street, which will be converted to some other public use. School officials promise that the old building, which was once the high school Frank Sinatra attended, will not be torn down.
Calabro, Connors and Wallace schools will remain elementary schools.
The Brandt School, which is now a middle school, will be converted into an elementary school. All of the city’s public middle school children will then move into the existing Hoboken High School building, which will become the city’s only middle school.
Other opportunities that the board members will face include the expansion of the International Baccalaureate Program from the middle school through high school, and a growing educational partnership between the school and Stevens Institute of Technology.
The board will also manage a nearly-$50 million annual budget. According to the state’s online School Report Card released in January, Hoboken spends the most in the county on a per-pupil basis, at $15,589.
Meet the candidates
Carmelo Garcia (incumbent) Carmelo Garcia volunteers as the vice president of the Board of Education and works full-time as the city’s director of human services. He was born and raised in Hoboken and is a product of the Hoboken School System. He has three children in the Hoboken Public School System.
Garcia graduated from Seton Hall University in 1997 with a Bachelors of Arts in Criminal Justice and Sociology. He has served as president of the Puerto Rican Cultural Committee and was one of the founders of the PRCC scholarship fund.
“In my opinion, there are a few issues that I consider most challenging,” Garcia said. “For instance, changing the perception of the public school system has always been very difficult in the city. It has been an issue for the last 20 years, but I’m confident that the experience, education, and commitment we offer as a team have already begun to improve the image of our public schools in the last three years. I always say that the Hoboken public schools are the best kept secret in town.”
Theresa Minutillo
Theresa Minutillo has been a homeowner in Hoboken for 17 years and a small business owner for past four. She created Senior Prep Day last year, which helped non-college-bound students prepare for their lives after high school graduation. She wanted to hold the event again this year, but was told by the administration that she couldn’t do it before the election because she is running for the school board.
Minutillo has been a harsh critic of the district’s budget.
“Not all of the money spent directly benefits the students,” Minutillo said. “I would redirect education dollars to education expenses: classrooms and curriculum, teachers and training, to make every penny of our tax dollars directly benefit our students and thus, our community.”
Frances Rhodes-Kearns (incumbent)
Frances Rhodes-Kearns is a lifelong Hoboken resident and product of the Hoboken School System. She was elected to the school board in 2002.
Rhodes-Kearns is employed at the Hudson County School of Technology. She resides in Hoboken with her husband Kevin and they are the parents of two children, Kelly and Rory. Both children attend schools in the Hoboken School System.
“Providing an education that services the entire community and also keeps pace with the technological and academic demands of an ever-changing world,” said Rhodes-Kearns. “Science and technology must become a focus of our attention for those whose aptitude indicates they will excel in such a program. We need to move forward with intense programs aimed at reaching those students who will benefit from strong performing arts programs and those who will find themselves drawn to a more vocational education type of curriculum.”
Jack Raslowsky II (incumbent)
Jack Raslowsky served as the principal of St. Peter’s Preparatory School for 11 years. He was then appointed the provincial assistant for Education and Lay Formation of the New York Province Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. In this role, he oversees the work of the seven Jesuit high schools and five middle schools in New York and New Jersey and sits on the Board of Trustees of each institution.
Raslowsky was appointed to the Hoboken Board of Education in January 2002 to fill an unexpired term and was elected to a three-year term in April 2002. He served a term as board president.
He said, “There are three significant challenges facing the board: Good stewardship of resources, i.e., insuring that we get the most out of every dollar we spend; development of existing programs, Pre-IB, IB, drama and music, and expansion of all the arts; and insuring public involvement in the new facilities projects so the projects serve well the entire town.”
Anthony Romano
Anthony Romano is a captain in the Hoboken Police Department, where he oversees the Community Policing Bureau. With the department, he has been active in the DARE program. He has undergraduate degree from St. Peter’s College and a master’s from Jersey City University. For seven years he taught history at Hoboken High School.
Also, for many years he has coached local sports and is currently the president of the Babe Ruth League. Romano is running on a platform to return the district back to a kindergarten through eighth grade system. “I think that changing to K to eight will streamline the system and be more cost effective by reducing the redundancy of services,” Romano said.
Francis Totaro
Francis Totaro is running under the slogan “Independently promoting education and not politics.” From 1983 until 2000, he has been a volunteer football coach on all levels, from grade to high schools. Totaro believes that politics play too large of a role in the school district. “I believe that one of the most crucial issues and biggest challenges facing the district is the political factor that is permeating the Board of Education and school system,” Totaro said. “On the current Board of Education, you have a municipal director, the city clerk, and two trustees who are candidates, one for mayor and one for council at large, in the municipal election in May.”
He added that sometimes “it seems that who you know is more important than what you know, and whose reputation is growing more tarnished by the day. What’s going on these days at the Board of Education is shocking, even by Hoboken’s standards.”