The elected school board referendum was placed on the ballot in the November 4 election and was passed by voters by a 77- to 23-percent margin.
But the issue may not be fully determined for a few months.
City Clerk Robert Sloan said that the school board election would likely be held in April, and that the three members’ seats due to expire that month would be those on the ballot. They are: Christopher Piechocki, Patrick F. O’Donnell, and Michael Masone. Piechocki was appointed to replace Daniel Bonner last month.
Sloan’s office will not handle the election. Rather, it will go through the school board for implementation.
“I’m very pleased that the voters ratified it,” said Michael Alonso, who led the effort to put the elected school board referendum on the ballot. “It was a two-year battle. But we got it done. We worked very hard to make sure voters were aware.”
Conversely, Board of Education President William Lawson, as he saw a groundswell of support for an elected board earlier this year, had advised the public that it might not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Not having a teachers’ contract resolution until September, and the support of an elected board by the new mayor and council, helped decide the November referendum, according to Lawson.
“I kind of anticipated that was the way it was going just because of the mood of the city,” Lawson said. “No one spoke about the good features of having an appointed board over an elected board.”
Lawson said that he believes a lot of what was accomplished with the current appointed board would not have been the case with an elected one.
“I don’t think there would be a School 14 if we had an elected board,” he said.
Lawson said Nicholas Oresko grammar school number 14 would not exist if an elected school board had to act on the funding for it.
Monies for the $25 million school had to be approved through New Jersey’s School Construction Corps fund, where the state offers matching funds put up by a municipality.
“We were able to act very quickly and secure our share of the funds,” Lawson said. “We were able to get the information necessary to the Board of School Estimate to qualify for matching funds from the state. It would have taken a little longer – or a lot longer – to move that forward.”
That would have been the case, he contends, because an elected board would have had to wait until the school board election cycle to put the plan up for a vote. With this specific project, many municipalities were not able to claim the matching funding because they did not act quickly.
Lawson said the Bayonne High School Academy of Fine Arts and Academics which opened last year might not have become a reality either for similar reasons.
Alonso anticipates that the first school board election will include candidates of all stripes, including those backed by Mayor James Davis, former Mayor Mark Smith, and a number of independents. He believes there will be a strong turnout, with 15,000 to 20,000 people voting.
Lawson is not so sure. He said that turnout for April school board elections is historically low.
He believes the $100,000 or more to fund the election will be a drain on school board resources.
But Alonso asked, “Can we really put a price tag on people’s right to vote, and keeping it non-partisan and separate from Republicans’ and Democrats’ influence?
Opponents of Davis are split about how the new elected board will affect him.
Some say it hurts Davis, taking away the mayoral-appointment privilege that existed for years and which served as a mechanism to reward followers and or firm up a mayor’s political base and power.
Others say that with the elected board in place, Davis will not be held accountable for education board decisions. Many believe previous Mayor Mark Smith lost his reelection bid, at least in part, due to a lack of the teachers’ contract settlement while he was in office.
E-mail joepass@hudsonreporter.com.