Three out of nine seats on the Hoboken Board of Education are in contention this November, and seven candidates are competing for the spots.
The Hoboken Quality of Life Coalition will hold a forum for the 2015 Board of Education candidates on Monday, Oct. 5, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Our Lady of Grace School Auditorium at 400 Willow Ave. During the forum, to be moderated by Bob Bowdon, audience members will submit their questions to a panel.
This is the fourth time a school board election has been held in November. Before the board decided in 2012 to move the vote to the general election, they were held in April. At first, turnout nearly doubled. The first November 2012 election garnered 20,463 votes compared to 10, 523 in 2011.
In terms of last year’s 33,517 registered Hoboken voters, only 9,098 actually voted, according to the Hudson County Clerk’s Office. Mail-in ballots back in 2012 totaled 2,044, but last year they were 762. The Hudson County Clerk’s Office said the variance is likely due to other municipal and presidential elections taking place alongside those school board elections in 2012 and 2013.
Still, the numbers indicate that last November, fewer than a third of registered voters cast a ballot in the school board race.
Stay tuned in the near future for profiles on the school board candidates.
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This year board President Ruth Tyroler and trustee Jean Marie Mitchell, whose terms expire this year, have opted not to run for re-election. The only incumbent in the race is Tom Kluepfel, who is also vice president. He was elected with Tyroler and Mitchell on the Kids First slate in 2012.
That group, which was backed by Mayor Dawn Zimmer in the past, currently includes Tyroler, Mitchell, Jennifer Evans, Sobolov, and Stromwall.
Other slates with seats on the current school board include Sharyn Angley, who was part of Parents for Progress slate, and Peter Biancamano, who won on the Education for All ticket last November.
Eight residents had filed on Aug. 31 to run for the Board of Education, but Diane Rubino will not appear on the ballot. The Hudson County Clerk’s office confirmed that Rubino withdrew from the election. She was not immediately available for comment.
Incumbent aligns with newcomers
Trustee Kluepfel recently came out on the “Reach Higher” slate along with newcomers and active parents Sheillah Dallara and Addys Velez.
Dallara is a mother of two children who attend Wallace Elementary School. Velez has children who attend Wallace, as well as Hoboken High School.
An online statement from the ticket members says they plan to support new superintendent Christine Johnson in her initiatives, and to “be independent and not beholden to any special interest or political group.”
Even though Kluepfel helped found the Elysian Charter School in the 1990s, he was among the Kids First school board members who tried over the past two years to sue to stop the newer Hoboken Dual Language Charter school from expanding to seventh and eighth grades. The school board’s various legal actions to stop the state from allowing the expansion ultimately failed, and the school was allowed to expand.
Kluepfel said that despite running on the Kids First slate in 2012, he maintains his independence from the group.
The other candidates are running as independents. Britney Montgomery ran for City Council alongside council member Tim Occhipinti’s unsuccessful mayoral run in 2013. In the past, she has championed efforts to increase open space and expand recreational programs for residents.
Resident John Madigan, who independently ran for a seat on the board in 2010, is running on a ticket with Alanna Kauffmann and Montgomery, according to a Facebook post. The candidates did not return phone calls or emails to comment.
School board President Ruth Tyroler, who was first elected in April 2009, said recently she had two reasons for deciding not to run again.
“I need more family time,” she said, “and the other reason is being on the Board of Education has been most rewarding volunteer commitment I have ever made. It has actually made me think about my career and I’m looking to go back to school for a master’s [degree] in development.”
While Kids First hasn’t officially put forth a slate in the upcoming race, Tyroler says she’s supporting the Reach Higher ticket of Kluepfel, Velez, and Dallara.
Tyroler, who has a son who attends Hoboken High School, said she plans to continue to stay involved in the community.
Aftershock of last November
In last November’s election for three out of nine seats, the Parents for Progress slate won two of three seats on the school board with Sharyn Angley and Monica Stromwall coming out victorious. Biancamano also won.
During that race, Zimmer and many Kids First allies publicly supported Parents for Progress after Kids First did not field candidates.
A fourth seat may open
Biancamano is currently vying for a City Council seat in the 2nd Ward. If elected, Biancamano would be legally obligated to give up his school board trustee seat. A temporary replacement would be assigned by the board to that seat and the term would expire in November 2017.
Biancamano has recently drawn criticism for continuing on the board during his council campaign. Brian Murray, the former unsuccessful school board candidate and husband of council candidate Bonnie Murray, called for his resignation at the Sept. 8 school board meeting.
Biancamano said that although he was re-elected just last year, his recent accomplishments and work as a trustee for nearly five years speak for themselves. Among those feats were leading the effort to fix the façade at Joseph Brandt Primary School and eliminating the scaffolding that has been standing for years, he said.
“In the past 10 months, I feel our biggest accomplishment was the selection a new permanent superintendent who will lead the district in a positive direction,” Biancamano said. “Currently, the law doesn’t allow me to sit on two different municipal bodies that have budgets funded by taxpayer money. So if I do win the council seat, I would be forced to resign from the board, unfortunately. I would do both if I could.”
The new superintendent, Christine Johnson, has largely been popular among all of the school board members regardless of their affiliations. During a comprehensive breakdown of her plans for the district at the September school board meeting, Johnson drew compliments from the public and school board members alike.
Johnson, who came from the Boonton school district, took over for Hoboken’s interim superintendent Dr. Richard Brockel on July 15. She was awarded a five-year contract with eight votes in favor and one abstention. Trustee Sobolov was not legally permitted to participate in the search or the final vote at the time under a new regulation because her “sister has worked for the [Hoboken school] district for over a decade.”
Elephant in the room
Besides naming a new superintendent, the hottest topic in recent school board debate has been the expansion of the HoLa Hoboken Dual Language charter school. In 2014, the board majority took legal action to block the charter school’s expansion to seventh and eighth grades.
Some board members tied to Kids First have said the district’s three charter schools – HoLa Hoboken Dual Language Charter School, Elysian Charter School and Hoboken Charter School – divert too many resources from other public school kids and cause segregation in the district. The issue divided some supporters of Mayor Zimmer, as Zimmer had backed the Kids First group in the past, but did not support Kids First’s lawsuit against and criticisms of charter schools. Zimmer’s children attended a charter school.
Time to vote
An outline from the New Jersey School Board Associations, provided by Johnson, says the school board members’ responsibilities mainly include overseeing the budget, approving the curriculum, evaluating the superintendent, representing the public during contract negotiations, and serving as a communication link between the community and the school system.
Registered voters can find their designated local polling place by plugging in their address on the State Division of Elections website at https://voter.njsvrs.com/elections/polling-lookup.html.
Registered voters who still want to vote by mail but have not yet applied must apply in person to the Hudson County Clerk’s Office Division of Elections on the 4th floor of the Hudson County Plaza, 257 Cornelison Ave., Jersey City, before 3 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 3. The application is available at http://www.hudsoncountyclerk.org/elections/vote-mail-ballot2012.pdf.
Mail-in ballots must be received by the County Board of Elections by the time polls close on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
The results of the election will be posted online at http://www.hudsoncountyclerk.org/elections/default.htm.
Steven Rodas can be reached at srodas@hudsonreporter.com.