Dear Editor:
Although I restrained myself during this electoral campaign almost making it to Election Day before writing to you, your front page article about the Russo campaign using Hoboken Board of Education mailing lists for political purposes was too good to pass up.
I can understand why Johnny’s parents might very well be peeved at having his name and ID number bandied around town willy-nilly, but I don’t have a Johnny of school age anymore and, if I did, I wouldn’t lose much sleep over his homeroom number being known by the mailman, or anyone else for that matter. No, it wasn’t the lists themselves that drove me to write; it was the silliness of the participants in the fiasco that did it.
Why is it not all that surprising that Superintendent Gagliardi and Board of Ed President David Anthony contradicted one another when they gave statements on the affair? Mr. Gagliardi said that someone needing a list of students for a “school function” (for invitations to a school play or something similar) could get one from the Board of Ed office. Mr. Anthony, on the other hand, vehemently said that the lists were given out to “any group that requests them” suggesting that had Hoboken United (or perhaps the KGB?) wanted a list presumably not for “a school play or something similar,” they could have gotten a list too. Come on fellas, what’s the story?
I hate to pick on Superintendent Gagliardi when he looks so foolish already, but this is not the first time that Pat and one of Hoboken’s other educational big-wigs told different stories about the same event, and in the paper no less. Do any of your readers remember the time that Mr. Gagliardi and then Hoboken High Principal Frank Spano each thought that the other knew what a recently-indicted “teacher” was doing at Hoboken High to justify his salary? It turns out that, in fact, neither of them knew what job the mayor’s crony was performing but assumed that the other one did! The two of them sporting almost identical “What Me Worry?” grins, pointed at the other only to see the other pointing back at him. Now that is some silly stuff, isn’t it?
But yes, do investigate this matter. Let’s find out if the homeroom list was “paid for by the Russo Team 2001” as stated and, if so who was paid and how much was paid? Oh yes, do investigate this matter.
A Hoboken taxpayer