“Only the Policies I Agree with Matter & Only the People I Like Are Allowed to Vote”
Berkeley Heights BOE Attorney, Business Administrator, and The Penna Bloc’s Display of Cognitive Dissonance During the 01/04/2023 Re-Org Meeting Several emails were sent to the Business Administrator and Board of Education on how the Agenda violated Board Policies and By-Laws. Despite this prior notice and stated objections to policy violations the Agenda represented, the Business Administrator, Attorney, and the Penna...
The Community Voted For Change & BHPSNJ Administration Can’t Seem to Let Go
With A Split Board, The former Majority May Be Resorting to Desperate Tactics on Day One The Board Agenda for the Re-Organization Meeting has been the same for decades. However, it appears the District is attempting to change the rules to prevent the change the community has voted for in the past three years. Multiple individuals have emailed and called the...
Designed To Fail: Last Year’s BOE Majority Created Conditions For Chaos
Berkeley Heights Residents should pay close attention to this Thursday’s BOE Re-Org Meeting Yesterday, Laura wrote about the BOE Agenda and pointed out some concerning facts surrounding the differences between this year’s and last year’s reorganization meeting. The most notable changes, in my opinion, were the removal of appointments and new business. The Board Attorney has been a significant sticking...
Transparency in NJ Had a Near Death Experience – What Now?
Now that there has been a pause to overhauling OPRA and OPMA – let’s take the opportunity to make both laws better. I would argue that one of BHCW’s most significant accomplishments is the normalization of OPRA requests in our community. It wasn’t too long ago that neighbors would post the OPRA requests of other neighbors in some weird attempt...
A Key Moment During the 12/19/2023 Berkeley Heights Town Council Meeting
The annoying and potentially dangerous “don’t get in the way of progress argument” reveals itself yet again. The clip below is, in my opinion, one of the more important exchanges during the 12/19/2023 Town Council Meeting. Town Council Member-Elect Margaret Illis asked the Council whether the Council considered recommendations by the Planning Board. This is a question she asked the...
Preliminary Results on 2023 Proficiency for the Berkeley Heights Public School District- Math, Science, ELA and Algebra I
Results on the NJSLA have become recently available. Here is the text of the email I sent to the Board of Education on this data. I looked at the raw data on the NJSLA results for Spring this year and completed a year-to-year comparison. A few notes: This is a preliminary report of the data – I am not aware...
90 Thousand Reasons the Berkeley Heights Public School District Needs to Hire a New Law Firm Next Year
And Why Other NJ Districts Should Reconsider Hiring “Mega-Firms” Our favorite law firm, Cleary, Giacobbe, Alfieri, and Jacobs, hit the 90K mark this month, taking in 50% of the District’s spending, which totaled ~180.000 according to Bill Lists from 1/2023 Through 12/2023. The firm surpassed the entirety of the District’s legal expenditure for the fiscal year before Dr. Varley’s tenure...
What It’s Like to Ask For Basic Documents from the Berkeley Heights School District
A recent example Illustrating why OPRA Laws Cannot be Weakened I am posting this conversation to illustrate how the District responds to basic requests for information. My email starts with a request I have made regularly after every BOE Meeting over the past few months. Here is my original email: Ms. Bradford forwarded the email to Mr. Cianculli (I...
NJ State Legislative Round-Up 12/02/2023
Elimination of Basic Skills Test For Teachers, Parental Permission for Social Media, Restrictions on Merchant Fees for Credit Card Transactions, Change to Liquor License Laws on the Horizon and Pause on Renewable Energy Since June of this year, BHCW has focused much of its attention on potential OPRA “reform” at the state level, but many other bills and laws that...
Update On Efforts to Change the Open Public Records and Open Public Meetings Act During Lame Duck Session
So we got an update from someone who has a bit more information than us on concerns connected to potential changes to OPRA – this is what they wrote us on Wednesday afternoon: Danielson filed four opra bills but none of them are going to advance. Sarlo is working on an opra bill and opma bill but nothing’s been filed...
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