Dear Editor:
I am disheartened by the direction the Kids First Board of Education is taking our schools. The focus is on courtrooms when the emphasis should be on classrooms. Over the summer the Board of Education voted to increase legal fees to continue its ill fated lawsuit against one high performing charter school while giving sweetheart lease deals to two others. These seemingly opposite stances only further to take money out of the classrooms and fail to address long known financial problems of the district. Also, The Board of Education and it’s new superintendent are now appealing district performance scores, presumably because they are too low not too high. Appeals, I guess, are a better use of time and resources of the administration than just doing a better job.
This summer saw the Board of Education attempt an illegal budget maneuver to fire kindergarten aides. Was it incompetence or hubris? I am sure that it will be blamed on the former superintendent Toback whom Kids First recently petitioned to increase his salary over state limits. Additionally, under the guise of belt tightening, they fired bus drivers and aides for special needs students, thereby hurting those who need the most help. Yet, during this same meeting the Board of Education raised the salary of outside paralegals to nearly $300k a year on a prorated basis. $300k a year! Finally, the Board of Education continued pushing revolving door of superintendents by hiring an outside interim at $160,000 a year. It is dumbfounding why Kids First would choose someone with no experience of Hoboken’s specific challenges? How does hiring a place holder, help provide vision in a time when our schools our struggling by every quantifiable measure? Wasted was an opportunity to find a homegrown leader who was in it for the long haul and not a dollar. Instead Hoboken gets a Kids First mouth piece until our dollars, which should be used in the classroom, find the next short time replacement. In two years the school budget has increased 8 percent. It seems the extra money is not being spent in the classrooms. Our rankings, near the bottom in the state, remain stagnant. Despite a summer of ineptitude by the Board of Education, I remain hopeful that things can change and the quality of our schools can significantly improve. If we want change, we need to change the people we elect, not the superintendent, the bus drivers and the aides.
Thanks,
Brian Murray
Candidate for Board of Education