Intrigue at Holmdel BOE Meeting 3/12/14

The Holmdel Board of Education meeting turned into a game of Survivor last night (of which I am a huge fan). There was conflict, intrigue, suspense, and then a twist at the end. 

It started out normal enough and was actually going pretty quickly being as there were no presentations last night. Then at around 8:30 things changed.

The board was set to vote on agenda item 9d, the adoption of Tentative Budget for 2014/2015. This budget has been gone over by many people over several months and is again going to come under the 2% cap.  This should have been a fairly simple vote like all of the others during the evening.

Mr. Mike Sockol decided to change that. He proposed that the budget get amended to 2.17% in order to create a full time position for an assistant to the Director of Special Services Meryl Gill.  This new position would be paid between $90,000 and $110,000. He stated that there is going to be an increase in the number of special needs children in the school district and that this position was needed. On the surface this might seem like a good idea. If the current director needs assistance due to her being overworked and an influx of special needs students. These two issues though, are not the case. Board President, Mrs. Anna Vander Woude, pointed out that a recent study, although not targeted at special needs, showed that general enrollment is decreasing not increasing and that in the near future enrolment will actually fall below the 3,000 children currently attending Holmdel schools. Also important to note is that Mrs. Gill is not only working for the Holmdel school district but she is also working as the Director of Pupil Services for the Beverly School in Burlington County according to the Burlington County Public Schools Directory found online at http://www.co.burlington.nj.us/upload/Supt_Schools/Images/PublicSchoolsDirectory.pdf. Therefore an argument for her being overworked in Holmdel cannot be a valid argument.

Another very important fact is that no one from administration asked for this position to be created. Every year administrators put together a “wish list” for the board of education to consider when making their new budget.  As Mrs. Vander Woude pointed out, if they were to raise the budget over the cap and create a position that no one asked for they would be “leap frogging” over many other requests that were made to the board and this would not be fair.

As the discussion went on for over 30 minutes board members  Barbara Garrity and Robin Wetmore agreed with Mike Sokol that they wanted to increase the cap in order to discuss hiring a new administrator. Board member Joseph Hammer agreed that a discussion could take place about hiring for this position but it can be done without raising the cap. He stated that they were elected to make these types of choices while not asking the taxpayers for more money. Vice President Dennis Pavlik stated that there were a lot better places that $110,000 could be spent that would benefit the children of Holmdel.

After a bit of procedural wrangling as to how to handle Mr Sockol’s request a vote was taken on whether or not to increase the cap over the 2% limit.

Saying yes were Mike Sockol, Barbara Garrity, and and Robin Wetmore.

 Voting no were Ana Vander Woude, Dennis Pavlik, Joseph Hammer, and Chiung-Yin Cheng Liu.

The vote did not pass, therefore ensuring that the Board of Education will not be finalizing a budget that is over the 2% cap.