The state ethics commission decision ruling that former Hillside school board member Elbert Smith be suspended for six months for ethics violations was read publicly at a recent board meeting and the decision must be posted at the board office where public notices are usually displayed, officials said.
In April, Smith lost his bid for re-election, thereby making his suspension moot. Smith had appealed the ruling but the state commissioner of education backed the School Ethics Commission’s determination that Smith overstepped his bounds as a school board member to undermine the high school principal, who was his wife’s boss.
The state’s top education official last week upheld the School Ethics Commission’s finding that former school board member Elbert Smith violated several school ethics rules and upheld the panel’s recommendation that he be suspended for six months.
The suspension may now be a moot point, however, because Hillside voters last month kicked Smith out of office.
In November, the commission ruled that Smith committed four ethics violations between 2006 and 2007 by overstepping his bounds as a board member and undermining the authority of the principal of Hillside High School, where his wife still works as a teacher, as well as the authority of the superintendent.
The campaign manager for mayoral candidate Joseph Menza has lodged a complaint against the Hillside Democratic Campaign Committee’s school board slate, claiming they failed to file required finance reports with the state.
In a letter to Election Law Enforcement Commission executive director Frederick Herrmann, Menza campaign manager John O’Shea says the HDCC’s Committee For Sensible School Spending “completely defied the statutory requirements of campaign reporting” despite spending “well in excess of $15,000.00.”
Voters returned incumbent school board member Angela Menza to the Hillside Board of Education but denied veteran member Elbert Smith a fourth term in tonight’s school board election.
This is the fourth in a series looking at the campaign literature put out by candidates in this spring’s school board and municipal elections. We’ll take a critical look at the messages and rhetoric and invite readers to comment. Here’s part 1, part 2 and part 3.
Election day is today, which means Hillside voters have been barraged since Friday with last-minute mailings and leafletings by candidates desperately seeking votes. But how much of it should you believe?
We found one piece of literature in particular — from the slate topped by incumbent Elbert Smith — in need of special attention for an inaccuracy and a somewhat disingenuous message.
Voters on Tuesday will pick from six candidates to fill three three-year seats on the Hillside Board of Education.
Incumbent school board members Elbert Smith and Angela Menza each head a slate of three candidates.
Voters will also get to decide on a $25.8 million school tax levy that would raise school property taxes on average by 3.5 percent.
Running with Smith on a platform to “change our children’s future” are Diane Murray and Jamar Cherry. Shelby Robinson and Danny Santos are running with Menza on a platform of “Progress — moving forward.”
This is second in a series looking at all the campaign literature put out by candidates in this spring’s school board and municipal elections. We’ll take a critical look at the messages and rhetoric and invite readers to comment. Here’s part 1.
We’ve only managed to pick up one piece of literature from each of the two slates of school board candidates.
School board candidates Angela Menza, Shelby Robinson and Danny Santos had their wine and cheese fundraiser this afternoon at the real estate office of mayoral candidate Joseph Menza, who’s Angela’s cousin.
Seen there during the hour The Hillsider stopped by: school board member Nathalie Yafet and her husband, Steven, who said hello-goodbye and were off to hit the pavement; former school board member John O’Shea, who’s managing Joe Menza’s campaign; school board member June Korzeneski, who’s managing the school board slate’s campaign; and council candidates George Cook and Jean Miller.
UPDATE: TUESDAY, MARCH 3: Despite yesterday’s snow storm, Shelby Robinson managed to get her petitions to the board office and certified, making her the sixth candidate in Hillside’s school board election on April 21.
The six candidates will likely form two competing slates, with incumbent Elbert Smith, Diane L. Murray and Jamar Cherry on one, and incumbent Angela Menza, Danny Santos and Shelby Robinson on another.
The Smith slate would have the backing of the Hillside Democratic Committee and its township machine. The Menza team has the backing of mayoral candidate Joseph Menza (a cousin of Angela’s) and school board veteran Nathalie Yafet.
The Hillsider will profile all the candidates for school board. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: FRIDAY, FEB. 27: Our source got it wrong. Salonia Saxton has not filed to run in the school board election. She only notarized a petition.
Instead, we should have reported that Diane L. Murray, who runs her own insurance agency, had filed as a candidate.
Danny Santos, who will run with Angela Menza, has turned in his petitions today.
FEB. 24: School board incumbents Angela Menza and Elbert Smith have filed for re-election in April’s election.
Menza, a cousin of mayoral candidate Joseph Menza, will form a slate with Shelby Robinson (who placed seventh in a field of 10 school board candidates last year), and Salem Street resident Danny Santos, sources said.
Jamar Cherry, who ran for school board last year and lost, has filed for this year.
Cherry and Murray will most likely form a slate with Smith, who in the past has ran with support from the Democratic committee.
A few months ago, a state ethics panel recommended that Smith be suspended from the school board for six months for unethical actions. Smith’s lawyer has stalled the suspension with an appeal.
A month after the state School Ethics Commission recommended that Hillside Board of Education member Elbert Smith be suspended for six months for ethics violations, the school board is still waiting for a final decision by Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy.
Hillside school board president Nagy Sileem said that while he has read the commission’s ruling online, neither he nor the board secretary have received any details from the state regarding Smith’s fate.
The state School Ethics Commission last week recommended that veteran Hillside Board of Education member Elbert Smith be suspended from his elected position for six months as a penalty for violating the school ethics code.
If suspended, Smith will effectively be off the board until his term ends in April.
The commission last month found that Smith committed four ethics violations between 2006 and 2007 by overstepping his bounds as a board member and undermining the authority of the principal of Hillside High School (where his wife works as a teacher) and then-Superintendent Raymond Bandlow.
The state School Ethics Commission this week found Hillside school board member Dr. Elbert Smith in violation of four state ethics rules governing the conduct of school board members .
The charges were filed months ago by veteran school board member Nathalie Yafet.
The members of the new Hillside Alliance Against Drug Abuse (previously the Hillside Mayor’s Alliance) were announced this week.
Not a member is George Cook, who during the last four Council meetings lobbied for a seat on the panel.
It probably didn’t help Cook, who ran for a seat on the school board in April, that he described the new Alliance in a newspaper article as “a little toy and they are pulling it back and forth to see who gets it.” Even if it is true.
Nagy Sileem and Angela Garretson will be reprising their former roles as president and vice president, respectively, after a marathon voting session Friday at the Board of Education’s organization meeting.
Sileem and Garretson are part of the Democratic majority that continues to control the board. Two were decided upon after several rounds of voting and a 15-minute recess.
Garreston was president last year, with Andre Daniels as vice president.
In the first round, Garretson, Sileem and June Korzeneski — who was just re-elected on a slate with Nathalie Yafet — each tied.
In a subsequent round, in which board members had to name their choice rather than vote on each name, Korzeneski and Sileem tied after Daniels abstained.
At that point, Sileem called for a 15-minute break, during which he, Garretson, Ralph Humphrey (who arrived late) and Elbert Smith left the high school library, where the meeting was being held, and went down the hall for a powwow.
At separate times, Garretson and Sileem each came back to schmooze with Daniels.
Daniels got elected three years ago on the Democratic committee’s slate, but this year ran his own slate against the machine line. He has also expressed interest in seeking a council seat.
When the meeting restarted, Daniels voted with the majority to elect Sileem president.
The vote for vice president — between Angela Menza and Garretson — split down faction lines and Garretson won.
In other business, the board voted to retain all their current attorneys, auditor and broker.
Charlotte DeFilippo’s people finally made Nathalie Yafet cry. But those were tears of victory last night after her slate — in the words of Councilman-at-Large Jerome Jewell — “swept it.”
Yafet returns to her fifth term on the Hillside Board of Education. June Korzeneski returns in her first outright election win, having been previously appointed and re-elected on an unopposed unexpired-term ballot. And college student Tori Isaac is the newest, and youngest, member of the board.
The flat school budget also passed, which means the township council won’t have the chance to cut it — and mask the 6 percent municipal property tax increase.
We haven’t heard what the atmosphere was like at the Democratic Committee’s after-election party, but if the mood at Town Hall was any indication, the waterworks must have been flowing. After results poured into the clerk’s office, 3rd Ward Councilman John Kulish was being comforted by his wife.
Yafet is hated by the political machine because she’s a unwaveringly outspoken watchdog popular with voters. And despite nasty campaigns, Yafet has won five elections in a row.
When her husband Steven stood as an unsuccessful board candidate in the last two years, that provided the machine with two extra consecutive opportunities to trash Nathalie. See here.
Didn’t work.
It’s hard to say whether Andre Daniels’ slate — which put up an impressive campaign — helped split the vote in Yafet’s favor. Many people tend to vote across slate lines and his team certainly could have taken some of Yafet’s votes. It didn’t hurt, though.
Daniels is now the tie-breaker on the board. Yafet, Korzeneski, Isaac and Angela Menza will undoubtedly form one bloc while Angela Garretson, Elbert Smith, Nagy Sileem and Ralph Humphrey will remain as the other.
We wonder what Daniels, who was elected with the machine’s help, will do next year when his term expires.
All 10 candidates running for the Hillside Board of Education agree — at least they did at Thursday’s forum — that voters should approve the district’s flat-tax budget.
YAFET
There wasn’t much more the candidates — who are grouped into three competing slates and one independent — agreed upon, although several of the 150 people who attended agreed that much of what was said was “usual pablum” and “cliche.”
ISAAC
Richard Samiec, who’s running with Salonia Saxton and Jamar Cherry on the Democratic machine-backed slate, opened with this insight:
“When I ran five years ago our team was the ‘Children FIRST Committee.’ This year we’re the ‘Committee for Sensible School Spending.’ Put them together and you have the Committee for Children FIRST and Sensible School Spending.”
Incumbent Nathalie Yafet, however, pointedly slammed the political machine and stopped short of calling her opponents puppets.
KORZENESKI
“I am passionate about education and about the taxpayers,” Yafet said in her closing statement. “But I’m also passionate about not yielding control to the political machine. I have fought them for the twelve years that I’ve been on the school board and as long as the voters are behind me and I have a breath left, I will continue to represent this community in the best interests of the taxpayers and the students, not the political bosses!”
Yafet is running with Tori Isaac, a college student, and incumbent June Korzeneski, a former high school teacher, guidance counselor and teachers union leader.
The crowd cheered Yafet and solo candidate Shelby Robinson’s comments about being independent, but the politicos’ hatred of Yafet was evident in the peanut gallery.
As Yafet spoke, board member Elbert Smith — who’s backing Saxton-Samiec-Cherry — said: “She’s psychotic as hell.” To which political hanger-on Arthur Kobitz replied: “From the Twilight Zone.”
Speaking of the Twilight Zone, perhaps the weirdest moment came when the candidates were asked about their own education — as in, do they have any.
Cherry, who introduced himself as “the best candidate for the Board of Education,” hotly blurted out: “I won’t answer that question!” Then the Union County public works laborer went on to say: “I don’t have any degrees. I’m a coach and I can represent the rest of you.”
CHERRY
On the topic of drugs and violence in the schools, George L. Cook III said the effort “must start in the home so that teachers can spend more time teaching.” Cook is running with Antoinette “Toni” Parker and Jose Betances and they’re backed by school board member Andre Daniels and activist Jeffrey Dykes.
Robinson, the W.O. Krumbeigel Middle School PTA president, said that a police officer should be in the schools.
SAMIEC
Samiec suggested “cameras in the schools,” but Yafet corrected him: “We already have cameras in our schools.”
On the topic of school regionalization, which Gov. Jon Corzine has suggested as a way to save money, Cherry said he is “60-40″ in favor of it “until we get our house in order.” Saxon is “against it for now” but “willing to take a look at it later.” All others were fully against it.
SAXTON
When asked for areas where the budget can be cut if it is turned down by the voters, Issac said academics should not be cut but suggested looking into athletics. Robinson suggested finding savings in building usage. Other candidates avoided the question.
Yafet said that it is unreasonable to believe that the public would vote down this budget, which won’t raise school taxes, and ran off a list of items that have been put off for years that need to be addressed, including heating, ventilation and window replacement.
* * * *
After the forum, Kobitz — who’s the brother of former school board member and county election administrator Dennis Kobitz — was telling people that the campaign “was going to get nasty.” Read: expect slime targeting Yafet.
* * * *
Fourth Ward Councilman Gerald “Pateesh” Freedman, who’s backing Yafet-Isaac-Korzeneski, and 2nd Ward Councilwoman Shelley-Ann Bates, were the only council members at the forum. The mayor was also absent.
From the school board were: Smith, Angela Menza, Andre Daniels, Nagy Sileem and Angela Garretson.
Also: Joseph Menza, and community organizers Tonia Hobbs and Rayba Watson.
The two dozen residents who packed the community forum at the Hillside Public Library Saturday afternoon came ready with questions — why are taxes are so high, are township schools failing, and even: does the mayor really live in Hillside?
To that last question, which has long dogged Mayor Karen McCoy-Oliver, she replied: “It’s a rumor that unfortunately has not died. I ask you to ask council members if they in fact live in the Township of Hillside or if they live in it during their elections.”
The mayor didn’t name any names and her targets – the councilmen allied under Democratic boss Charlotte DeFilippo – didn’t respond because they weren’t there.
That was a fact the forum’s organizer, Tonia Hobbs, found unfortunate. The purpose of the forum, which was advertised in the local newspapers, was to bring residents and elected officials together to “develop an action plan” for Hillside.
Hobbs got the idea after watching the township council tell residents at their meetings to take their issues to the Board of Education – and vice versa.
“I thought, why not have them both in one place at one time,” said Hobbs, who’s lived in Hillside for about 10 years.
And then there’s the ongoing acrimony between the mayor and the council majority – an issue forum organizers hoped to address but couldn’t because the mayor’s loudest critics, led by Council President Lenny Gilbert, refused to enter the lion’s den.
If they had attended, the three-hour meeting might have lasted all weekend. There were as many issues as there were people in the room. One person said the Fire Department has too many officials. Another suggested a cap on municipal salaries. Others thought the schools needed to install metal detectors and repair their facilities.
At the end of the meeting, residents agreed that their priorities should be to pass the school budget – which, unlike the county and municipal budgets, offers no tax increase – and to help Councilwoman Shelley-Ann Bates’ referendum campaign to broadcast council meetings on public-access cable.
Besides the mayor, the officials who addressed the crowd were Bates and school board members Nathalie Yafet, Elbert Smith and June Korzeneski.
In the audience were school board candidates Shelby Robinson, Antoinette Parker, Jose Betances, George L. Cook III, school board members Andre Daniels and Ralph Humphrey, and planning board member Myrna Weissman.
Forum organizers hope to follow-up with another meeting on Saturday, April 12.
The state’s top education official last week upheld the School Ethics Commission’s finding that former school board member Elbert Smith violated several school ethics rules and upheld the panel’s recommendation that he be suspended for six months.
The campaign manager for mayoral candidate Joseph Menza has lodged a complaint against the Hillside Democratic Campaign Committee’s school board slate, claiming they failed to file required finance reports with the state.
