In Hoboken, the April school board elections are often seen as a sign of what will happen in the May City Council elections. If the mayor’s school board candidates win, the wisdom goes, it’s a good sign for the council candidates.
Eight candidates are vying for three spots on the nine-member board on April 27. The deadline to register to vote in that election is this coming Wednesday.
The Hoboken School Board oversees Hoboken High School, Brandt Primary School, Calabro Elementary School, Connors Elementary School, and Wallace Elementary School. The board also contributes financially to the city’s charter schools.
The candidates will convene for a forum on April 4 at 6:45 p.m. in Kidde Hall on the Stevens
campus.
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The school board positions are unpaid.
Allegiances abound
This year, one group of candidates is allied with the board faction known as “Kids First.” Kids First has received the backing of Mayor Dawn Zimmer. The other five candidates are made up of a slate of three, and two independents.
The incumbents up for election are Carmelo Garcia, Frances Rhodes-Kearns, and Jean Marie Mitchell. They are not all on the same ticket.
Garcia and Rhodes-Kearns have aligned with challenger Peter Biancamano, whose family owns a famous Washington Street deli.
Mitchell has aligned herself with the “Kids First” slate, along with challengers Clifford Godfrey and Steven Feinstein.
The independent challengers are John Madigan and Patricia Waiters. Waiters is also running in the May City Council election, jockeying for a position as the 2nd Ward representative. She would not be able to take both positions if elected.
Anthony Oland, who had filed to run, decided to drop out of the race.
The candidates
Last week, Mitchell said she volunteered with Kids First for a few years before she became a board member, and said the “Kids First group is very aligned” with her values. Mitchell is also a former Parent Teacher Organization president.
Rhodes-Kearns is another incumbent, but she is on a different side of the aisle from Mitchell.
“They [Kids First] touted transparency, and I don’t believe they’ve proved to be the transparent team they said they were going to be,” Rhodes-Kearns said. “When I was the [Board] President, I included everybody. I don’t see anybody in the minority who is the chair of any committee.”
Rhodes-Kearns describes the “minority” of the school board as herself, Garcia, and Maureen Sullivan, who is often the loudest voice of dissent to the Kids First members.
Rhodes-Kearns said she wanted dual language programs to be a part of the Hoboken public school system. Recently, the state’s first dual language charter school opened in Hoboken.
“It’s a dual loss,” she said. “We lost a good program and we lost funding that we have to give to [the charter school] now.”
Garcia is currently the executive director of the Hoboken Housing Authority in addition to his role on the school board.
Godfrey, who is aligned with the Kids First slate with Feinstein and Mitchell, grew up in Newark and Nutley, and received a Business and Technology Degree at Stevens Institute of Technology. He was a member of the National Society of Black Engineers and served as the Pre-College Initiative Chairman, where he mentored high school students about education.
Feinstein served as the President of Elysian Charter School Board for four years, and is a former attorney.
“I’m of the mind that with parents involvement in education, the deeper the better,” Feinstein said. “I find this as a way to get deeply involved in education in Hoboken.”
Biancamano, who is running with the support of Garcia and Rhodes-Kearns, is a producer at MSNBC, and a graduate of Hoboken High School.
“[Through work] I go around the country and see how our education system is changing,” Biancamano said. “Some students in Hoboken have one big problem: they don’t know life outside of Hoboken. I was born and raised in Hoboken. My parents have had a deli in town for 30 years. I worked my way through college; I was a deli boy growing up. I made it to one of the biggest media companies in the world, and now I want to bring my skills to show students about life outside of Hoboken.”
Biancamano said he hopes to start an internship program at Hoboken High School.
“After sitting on the sidelines for so long, I would like to make a difference now,” he said.
Candidate Patricia Waiters, when asked about the fact that she’s running for both school board and council, said last week, “I would take the Board of Education seat hands down. I have kids in the school system.”
Waiters touted her involvement in the school working on the “small problems” of the education system.
Forum this week
The candidates will convene for a forum on April 4 at 6:45 p.m. in Kidde Hall on the Stevens campus. Kidde Hall is at the Sixth Street entrance to Stevens near Hudson Street. The forum is sponsored by the Hoboken Family Alliance, the Quality of Life Coalition, and Stevens Institute of Technology.
Ray Smith may be reached at RSmith@hudsonreporter.com