The Jersey City Independent "

Photo: Vanessa Cubillo

As the Jersey City Board of Education’s last public convening of the school year, Thursday’s meeting doubled as a showcase of the past ten months of student and teacher achievements in the Jersey City Public Schools. And yet the drama did not end when the student performers and their parents went home — several high stakes issues, most notably the future of Superintendent Charles Epps’ contract, elicited impassioned pleas from concerned community members for whom the performances and award ceremony were but a preamble to the night’s main event.

“I want you all to see what Jersey City Public Schools are doing,” Epps said of the performances and award ceremony, which were followed by votes on over a hundred agenda items. All of these were approved, with the exception of three items — related, respectively, to the award of a bid for window washing services, speech language services for non-public school children, and examination and classification of non-public school children — issues that were tabled and will be voted on at a later date. The floor then opened to community members, the first several of whom had come expressly to support Epps.

Epps’ contract is up for renewal in 2011, and his continued tenure as superintendent was put into question in May, when board member Angel Valentin released a statement urging the board to support a national search for a replacement.

Jersey City Deputy Mayor Kabili Tayari was first to the podium. He suggested that board members had not followed procedure in deciding when and how to review the superintendent’s contract, and that racism was among the motivations for the national search.

“I know overt when I see it and I know covert when I see it,” Tayari said.

Rev. Rudolph Daniels praised Epps’ accomplishments in the Jersey City Public Schools as “unparalleled and unsurpassed.” Emphasizing the superintendent’s lifelong ties to Jersey City, Daniels asked: “Why do we have to search? The search should be over.”

Community activist and retired social worker Virginia Miller, like Daniels, praised Epps for his involvement in the Jersey City community.

“I see Mr. Epps every day; the kids see him every day,” she said. “He attends funerals. He goes to Ocean Avenue, to MLK.”

Echoing Tayari, she hinted that race might be a factor behind the move for a national search.

“There is a rumor floating around, Mr. Valentin, about who you are looking to fill the superintendent position,” Miller said. “And guess what? That person does not look like me.”

As of now, it remains unclear when or whether the board will resolve to conduct a national search for a new superintendent.

Within minutes of these impassioned defenses, Superintendent Epps was himself put on the defensive, as two sets of parents came to the podium to air unresolved complaints against a teacher at School #5 on Merseles Street. “What exactly is it that you want me to do?” Epps asked the first couple, who have been involved in a protracted conflict with their daughter’s teacher. “My concern is for the young lady, not for you and not for the teacher.”

Board members likewise refrained from supporting either the parents or the teacher in the dispute, but when the second complaint against the Downtown school came to light, several said that the fact that neither conflict was resolved in the school before being brought to the board was indicative of a broader problem with the school’s organization and responsiveness. “It’s not just Number 5,” added new board member Sterling Waterman. “People need to feel that they can speak about their child without a sense of retaliation.”

Law Firm Tapped for Labor Negotiations

The board approved a contract with Lyndhurst-based law firm Scarinci Hollenbeck to serve as Special Labor Counsel for “numerous and significant labor and employment matters including collective negotiations with multiple bargaining units, litigation, and legal issues involving personnel.” The contract, which runs from July 1 of this year to June 30 of 2011, covers up to $100,000 in legal fees at rates up to $175 an hour.

Odds & Ends

• The name of Marc DiNardo, the Jersey City Police Department detective who was killed in a Reed Street shootout last summer, will grace the School #23 Annex at 128 Duncan Ave., and Early Childhood Center #13 (at Ege Avenue and MLK Drive) will be named in honor of Bishop Ralph E. Brower and Alice J. Haskins.
• A total of 555 suspensions were handed out in the district in May, up from 422 in April. Of those, 161 were in the high schools and 394 were in the elementary and middle schools. The high school figure represented a 17 percent decrease from May 2009; in fact, each month of this school year has seen fewer high school suspensions than the last school year. But the elementary/middle school figure was a 12.7 percent increase from May 2009, when there were 344 suspensions. On the whole, though, elementary/middle school suspensions continue to be down from last school year — May was only the second month that the number had been higher than the previous year’s.
• Sixty-six students dropped out of the school district in May, a slight uptick from the 64 in April, but down from the May 2009 figure of 75. Of the 66 dropouts, 40 were in 9th Grade, 20 in 10th, and 3 each in 11th and 12th.

The next public BOE meeting will be held on Thursday, August 26, at PS 11.

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