Parents and residents still on the fence over who to vote for in the Nov. 3 Board of Education election still have a week and a half to decide. Three out of nine seats for the volunteer three-year positions are up for grabs. School board trustees oversee the district’s budget, approve the curriculum, evaluate Superintendent Christine Johnson, represent the public during contract negotiations, and serve as a liaison between the community and the school system.
The board’s president, Ruth Tyroler, and trustee Jean Marie Mitchell, whose terms expire this year, are not running 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.
This year, two slates and one independent candidate are running.
Patricia Waiters, a vocal critic of Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s administration and self-proclaimed reformer, is running an independent campaign.
Meanwhile, the “Reach Higher, Hoboken!” ticket is made up of Kluepfel and first-time candidates and active parents Sheillah Dallara and Addys Velez.
A third slate, “A Smarter Future,” is made up of John Madigan, who independently ran for a seat on the board in 2010, and longtime residents (also first time runners) Alanna Kauffmann and Britney Montgomery.
Kids First, a group that was backed by Zimmer in the past, currently includes Tyroler, Mitchell, Jennifer Evans, Irene Sobolov, and Monica Stromwall – holding the board majority. While the group 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.
This year, two slates and one independent candidate are running for three Hoboken Board of Education seats.
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“I am proud to support Tom Kluepfel’s well earned re-election,” she said. “Sheillah Dallara and Addys Velez are district parents with backgrounds in finance who have demonstrated their strong commitments to our schools and our community.”
Running independent campaign
Patricia Waiters unsuccessfully ran for the school board last November on the Parents for Change slate along with Brian Murray and Lynn Danzker.
That slate, which called for more open dialogue between the board and mile-square city residents, is not too different from Waiter’s new goals if elected.
“I’m running a standalone campaign,” said Waiters on the phone this past week. “[Reach Higher, Hoboken!] is an undercover Kids First. I stand as someone who cannot be controlled and cannot be bought.”
Waiters, who said she attends every City Council and Board of Education meeting, calls for more diversity on elected boards. She claims Zimmer’s candidates are loyal to the mayor and thus won’t be proper representatives of the community. She has worked on the Hoboken Early Childhood Advisory Council since 2011 and previously worked for the state assembly office as aide for Assemblyman Carmelo Garcia.
Waiters, who has been in litigation for the past seven years to be reinstated as a corrections officer in Kearny, has three children; who have all at some point been part of the Hoboken school system.
She said if she doesn’t win a position, she is eyeing a fourth seat that would open up if school board trustee Peter Biancamano, who is running for a 2nd Ward City Council seat, wins that election. If Biancamano is elected, he would legally be obligated to vacate his seat and the board would elect a temporary entrant until the term ends in 2017.
“If I lose, I hope the board is honest and votes with a conscience [to put me in that position],” she added.
Waiters also noted that she supports HoLa Charter School’s expansion and regardless of election results will continue to advocate for the community.
Prior to the last school board election, Waiters made headlines in a way she now deems was intended to “smear” her campaign. She made a comment at a Housing Authority meeting in May of 2014 that several people considered anti-Semitic. At the time, Waiters was a paid aide to Assemblyman Carmelo Garcia, the former head of the HHA who is suing Zimmer and the city over his dismissal.
At the meeting, she alleged that many real estate businesses with Jewish surnames had opened since Mayor Dawn Zimmer (who is Jewish) took office, and that Zimmer had only appointed Jews to city boards.
The comment came up at a time when Zimmer was being accused of avoiding hiring minorities. A previous story in The Hoboken Reporter had noted a very low level of Latin Americans on the most powerful city boards.
At the next City Council meeting after the alleged comment, David Mello, a city councilman at the time and HHA board member, publicly condemned Waiters’ remarks and called on Garcia to remove her from his payroll. She declined to resign. But she did apologize for the comments in a letter to the Hoboken Reporter a few weeks later (which she later rescinded the apology because she felt the claims were untrue to the point they shouldn’t be acknowledged).
In an interview a few weeks later, Waiters denied being anti-Semitic, saying that she didn’t even know how to pronounce the word.
Today Waiters says the allegations against her were intended to denounce her reputation around election season.
“All that was unfounded,” she said. “I’m not entertaining what isn’t true. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now.”
‘A Smarter Future’
Britney Montgomery, who is running with Madigan and Kauffmann, has lived in Hoboken for the last 10 years. She has also worked as a special education teacher in New York City for the last 14 years and works to provide education for physicians.
Madigan, who has been highly involved in the district, ran in 2010 for the school board to no avail.
Born and raised in Hoboken, he graduated from Hoboken High School and has two children (a junior at Montclair State University and senior at High Tech High School). Madigan founded the Calabro School Basketball League, has been a director in the Hoboken Youth Soccer League since 1999 and has served on the A.J. Demarest/Hoboken High School Sports Hall of Fame Committee since 1997.
Kauffmann, who graduated from Fordham University with a BS in psychology and minor in sociology, has lived in Hoboken for the last six years. She has three children ages 13, 3, and 1.
The three candidates said they plan to “put the students before politics.”
“We want to support the new superintendent and teachers with new resources and development opportunities to help them create a safe and productive learning environment,” the slate said in a statement.
The candidates want to reduce non-educational spending.
Montgomery, who unsuccessfully ran for City Council two years ago, said she hopes to work with the new superintendent to create more community involvement.
“Linking the community with school system is a focus,” she said, “[as well as] improving the high school and attracting more students.”
The slate also says they are opposed to lawsuits that disrupt the learning of any Hoboken students including the legal action taken against the expansion of Hoboken Dual Language Charter school in 2014. The “Kids First” board majority had taken legal action to stop the charter school from expanding to seventh and eighth grades.
“We want to connect the whole community (residents with and without children) to get involved and feel proud of all of our schools through more volunteerism or afterschool programs,” the slate added.
Madigan in particular feels the lawsuit went after the HoLa Charter School specifically and therefore stifled the education of children. If the board majority felt charter schools were defunct, he said, they would “go against all charter schools on a state level.”
Like Waiters, Madigan also says the Reach Higher, Hoboken! slate is a veil for Kids First.
“We have to get High School students interested in college and make more programs [to lead them in that direction],” said Madigan, noting that he feels the superintendent has done an overall good job so far, “as long as she doesn’t play politics.”
‘Reach Higher, Hoboken!’
Tom Kluepfel, a co-founder and inaugural board chairperson of the Elysian Charter School in the late 1990s, was first elected on the Kids First slate in 2012.
Despite helping to launch the Elysian Charter School years ago, Kluepfel was among the school board members who tried over the past two years to sue to stop a different charter school, HoLa Charter School, from expanding. The school board’s various legal actions to stop the state from allowing the expansion ultimately failed, and the school was allowed to expand.
“I’m certain that HoLa is a nice little school and don’t blame its families for wanting to continue their program a few years beyond their original intention,” he said. “But should it come at the expense of our district children and their own program? No.”
Dallara and Velez concur. Although supporters of all schools, they feel taking a budget “already squeezed to its limit” to fund for an expansion doesn’t serve the kids fairly.
“We need to start focusing our energy and resources on fixing this problem first before we move forward,” said Dallara.
Madigan’s response to the candidate’s claims is that the district spent money on the lawsuits which led to the cutting of programs.
Madigan said for the benefit of all students, including those at HoLa, sometimes it’s better to do more with less – in this case, disperse the budget monies to benefit all schools fairly.
Despite running on the Kids First slate in 2012, Kluepfel said he maintains his independence from the group.
He is no longer a district parent (his youngest was a class of 2014 graduate of Hoboken High School; she is now a biology major at Ramapo College).
The mayor-supported ticket includes two first-time runners and Hoboken parents as well.
Dallara has two children at Wallace School; a daughter in the pre-k and son who is in the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) program for children with special needs.
She has had experience in the auditing field for five years and serves as the vice president of the Wallace School Parent-Teacher Organization. She also co-directs for the Hoboken Special Needs Parents Group.
Velez, a 13-year Hoboken resident, works in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. She has three children in district public schools; two daughters at Hoboken High School and a son at Wallace School.
All three candidates said they “wholeheartedly” support Superintendent Johnson. Among the new superintendent’s proposals (she began her term last July) have been plans to revamp afterschool programs and bolster public involvement.
Kluepfel said in the future the school board should prioritize infrastructure (three of the district’s schools are nearing 100 years old) and a growing student population.
Dallara said allocating space for a growing student body is vital while Velez, in addition to echoing those statements, said increasing the funding for extracurricular activities is paramount.
Kluepfel added that although Waiters’ passion is evident, she has run for City Council and the Board of Education in recent years, which indicates a lack of focus in regard to improving the school district specifically.
“It’s not a lack of focus. It’s an urgent need to bring integrity back to the administration. That’s why I run for every office,” responded Waiters to the comments later. “I think I’m well focused because I could tell you how the budget is being operated and how the school system is failing. I’m running and will continue to run for every office because I know firsthand what’s wrong with the system in Hoboken.”
In response to allegations from Waiters and Madigan that Reach Higher is synonymous with Kids First, Kluepfel said, “The school board is completely independent of city hall, and as a member of the board, I take orders from nobody. Furthermore, we three Reach Higher candidates are not affiliated with or beholden to anyone or any political group.”
He added that as a current school board member he has “never wavered in my advocacy for the district and its students.”
Velez and Dallara emphasized that if elected, although they won’t be sworn in until January, will continue to engage in the community.
The terms for recently elected school board members Sharyn Angley, Peter Biancamano, and Monica Stromwall end in 2017. The seats of Jennifer Evans, Leon Gold, and Irene Sobolov will be up in 2016.
Steven Rodas can be reached at srodas@hudsonreporter.com.