Community Post: All In?

 

Frequent contributor and community favorite “Poor Richard” has submitted another timely editorial to The Watch.

Before you continue on to Poor Richard’s letter below, I’ve highlighted BEA President Mike Mignone’s 5-minute speech on YouTube from the last Board of Education meeting on September 15th. The message behind Mignone’s speech and the way he concludes it is the “All In” reference to which this article is responding, so you might want to take a quick look at that first.

By the way, the reason why everyone gets huffy in the video when Board President John Rivera tries to cut off Mignone’s speech (aside from it being rude, of course) is because the audience was forced to wait an entire hour past the meeting’s start time, due to the Board’s closed session running extremely late, before the meeting even got underway.

Patience was understandably worn a bit thin at that point.

Enjoy.

~ Griff

 

 

 

 

I give Mr.  Mignone and the Teachers Union credit for their attempt to heal our School District with his gesture to create unity between the Board of Education, administration and teachers. I don’t know if I could be as forgiving as they have been.  The “all in” meeting was a nice thought, but how can you trust a Board of Education that has proven to be ethically and morally corrupt. This is the same Board of Education that was all in for creating a 5 million dollar budget shortfall. This is one of the main reasons why our taxes are going up this year and for years to come.  It’s easy for them to be all in when it is our money at risk.

The residents and the teachers are looking for transparency.  Imagine the surprise of the teachers when they saw that their Social Security Statement for 2013 showed zero.  Just like the surprise for those BOE employees that were laid off this summer but could not collect Unemployment or Disability.  Eventually, the problem was discovered, and is now being resolved. However, the only reason it did is because our State Monitor, Mr. Thomas Egan, has made sure all those payments are now up to date. We all know what was going on in the School District before his arrival.  It is called “Robbing Peter to pay Paul” – Payroll Taxes, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, Disability Insurance, vendors in 2013 and 2014 were not being paid.  Paperwork was not being filed. Things are changing, but it is only because of the State Monitor.

Although The Board of Education says they want transparency, the money shell game was done in an effort to hide the $5 million shortfall created by the Board of Education’s reckless spending.  Perhaps, if you were an accountant you could see this coming by reading the 2012-2013 audit. You would see all the late fees that had to paid because of late payroll tax payments.

It is time to ask Longo, Freda, Rivera, Zangari , Lombardi, Torres, and Keubler to tell us the truth.  Longo is now on the Township Council. We must never forget his part in this grand screw up and now cover up.  He was the one that stopped the Board of Ed meetings from being televised. Now he tells us he supports transparency. If that is the case, then come clean and tell us the truth about the 5 million dollar shortfall.

We have been waiting since March for the QSAC report rating our school district.  Where is it?   Is it that bad that no one wants to tell us?

Where is the 2013-2014 audit?

Where is all the data from the District’s computer system?

What about all those Social Security numbers?

Why did they hire a firm run by a convicted felon (for tax evasion), and give him the keys to all our personal data?  Now the District’s entire network and all its data has been compromised – what’s next?

Was this an accident?  Was it on purpose to steal our personal information and hide the crime?

Was it to destroy evidence that could be used as proof of the criminal activities we all believe happened?

4600 students will continue to receive a Third World education because the Board of Education cared more about themselves than the students they were supposed to protect.

When will somebody be held accountable?  When will they apologize?  When will they resign or be replaced?

On November 4th we need to select 2 candidates that are not supported or controlled by anybody on – or behind – the current Board of Education. It is very clear that none of them can be trusted.

They were “all in” on this travesty.

 

Poor Richard

 

 

 

Update: In response to Poor Richard’s question regarding the QSAC report, it is expected to be released sometime in the third week of October. And yes, sources tell us the ratings for Belleville are atrocious.

As soon as QSAC is released, it will be made available here on NutleyWatch.

 

 

 

 

About Griff 321 Articles
Lee "Griff" Dorry - Founder, watchdog, and public advocate. ♫ They've got strings, but you can see, there are no strings on me. ♫

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