When the superintendent sticks her nose into Board member fights, governance of the school district breaks down — and the victims are our children.

Eliza Schleifstein is a longtime resident and taxpayer of Randolph, NJ. She is the mother of two daughters who both attended Randolph Township Schools from kindergarten through graduation. She writes and comments on local education, with a focus on school district transparency and spending.

Disagreement is not a sign of dysfunction on a Board of Education. It is democracy in action. It is supposed to happen.  School board members are elected to ask questions, challenge assumptions, debate priorities, and exercise independent judgment on behalf of taxpayers and students. If every vote were unanimous and every Board of Education member agreed on every issue, the public should be more concerned, not less. 

The superintendent’s role is different.  Unlike elected board members, a superintendent has one client: the Board of Education acting as a governing body. It is the superintendent’s responsibility  to provide every Board of Education with equal access to information, to be allowed to meet with them, to implement the Board’s decisions, regardless of whether they agree with those decisions or how individual members voted, and to remain professionally neutral.  The superintendent’s direct boss is the Board of Education as an entity –  not the president or any one Board member or select group of members individually.

As school board governance consultant Kathryn Ramirez recently observed in a Facebook post: “Boards may be divided, but the superintendent cannot be.”

That isn’t simply good leadership.  It is essential to good governance. 

What Happens When a Superintendent Picks a Side when the Board is Divided and Fighting in Public?

The quickest way for a superintendent to lose credibility is not by making an unpopular recommendation or taking a controversial action.  It is by appearing to favor one faction of the Board over another.  Whether intentional or not, unequal treatment of board members creates a cascading breakdown in governance.

Questions become viewed as attacks. Oversight becomes labeled as obstructionism.  Information begins flowing differently depending on who asks.  Trust erodes, particularly with the public, who gets caught in the middle.

Once that happens, every recommendation or action of the superintendent is viewed through a political lens instead of an educational one.  

Eventually, the superintendent ceases to function as the district’s chief executive and instead becomes perceived as part of a political alliance, as has happened in my town of Randolph.

Randolph Is a Case Study in What Can Go Wrong

The recently released  documents stemming from an OPRA request for the submissions in the School Ethics Commission proceeding, Ron Conti v. Sheldon Epstein, provide an extraordinary look behind the curtain of board governance.

Two months after losing the election, now-former Board President and current private citizen Ron Conti filed a School Ethics Commission complaint against his former fellow Board member Sheldon Epstein for alleged violations of the School Ethics Act which took place when Mr. Conti was on the Board of Education.

The complaint itself failed.  The School Ethics Commission dismissed it in its entirety for failure to state a violation of any provision of the School Ethics Act. 

Ironically, it was the exhibits attached to the complaint, not the allegations, that revealed the more troubling story and confirmed what the members of the public who regularly attended Randolph Board of Education meetings already sensed:  our Board of Education was divided and our Superintendent had taken sides, actively working against a Board member who asked tough questions and who would not vote for her recommendations or preferences with no questions asked or without an analysis of the relevant information and documents.

The documents paint a picture of an administration that appeared to move beyond neutrality and squarely into board politics.  According to the released emails:

• Then-Board Vice President (and chair of the Board’s Facilities, Finance and Transportation committee) Amanda Adams wrote, “I’m thinking that we ignore him as much as we can and offer him minimal responses to his questions in public.” 
• She added, “My plan is to suffocate him with my silence.” 
• Superintendent Jennifer Fano responded, “I completely agree.” 
• In emails,  Superintendent called the Board member in question, Mr. Epstein, a “rogue Board member” rather than addressing the substance of his questions, refused to meet with him when he asked for a meeting and asked for “protection” from him from the Board because she viewed his asking questions as “harassment.”

Taken together, these communications raise serious questions about whether the Superintendent viewed one elected school board member as deserving of the same professional support afforded to every other Board member.

Whether one agrees with a Board of Education member’s style or focus on particular issues or policies not is irrelevant.  Every elected Board of Education member has the same fiduciary responsibility.  Every Board of Education member has the same legal duty to oversee a district funded by taxpayer dollars, whether it is $10 million, $100 million or over $1 billion, like some of our larger districts in New Jersey.  Every Board of Education member should receive the same information and have equal access to documents made available to the Board.  

Every Board of Education member should likewise have full access to the Board’s one direct employee, the superintendent, because in the real world, refusing to meet with your boss would be considered insubordination and grounds for immediate termination.

And every Board of Education member deserves to have their questions answered – accurately and in full.

Professional Neutrality Means Equal Treatment

New Jersey’s governance model depends upon independent oversight.  Board members cannot fulfill that responsibility if information is filtered through political relationships.

The superintendent should never decide:

• which Board members deserve complete answers to their questions; 
• whose questions receive prompt responses and who can be “put off” (perhaps indefinitely); 
• whose concerns are deemed meritorious or dismissed and ignored as troublesome; or 
• which Board of Education members are considered to be the administration’s partners, and which should be treated as adversaries. 

The superintendent’s responsibility to the Board of Education members is simple: provide the same information and share the same documents.  Provide the same level of access.  Show the same respect.  Every time.

Professional neutrality isn’t passive.  It requires discipline.  It means the superintedent remaining above Board politics, even when the Board members themselves cannot.

The Conti Files Raise an Even Bigger Question

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the School Ethics Commission complaint in Conti v. Epstein has little to do with the complaint itself.

In his filing, former Board President Ron Conti attached numerous documents that he explicitly described as “CONFIDENTIAL.”  He stated that those documents contained attorney-client privileged communications, executive session materials, and information protected by other legal grounds that, although he was using them as a sword to support his claims of ethics violations by fellow Board member Epstein, “should not be disclosed to any member of the public.”

Yet when he filed the complaint, Mr. Conti was no longer a Board member.  He was a private citizen. That raises an obvious question:  if these materials truly were confidential Board documents otherwise unavailable to the public (until he unilaterally decided to convert them into public records by exhibiting them to his complaint), how did he have them as a private citizen?

Several possibilities naturally arise:

• Did Mr. Conti retain confidential district records after leaving office?
• Was there no offboarding process when he left office, something that clearly should have fallen under the purview of the superintendent and Board attorney?
• Did someone still serving the district, either as a Board member or school administrator, provide them to him?
• Did he continue to have access to Board communications after his term ended?
• Or is there another explanation?

Clearly, Mr. Conti did not obtain these documents through the same process available to the rest of us – an OPRA request. A member of the public would not have known that these documents even existed in order to request them, and many likely would have been withheld as personnel records or attorney-client privileged (or deliberative process) communications, since the Board attorney was copied on them.

The public deserves an answer, not because of politics, but because confidential Board records belong to the district, not to former officials who are no longer performing any public duties for the district or the Board.

Equally troubling is what the filing itself may reveal.  By attaching documents that he characterized as “confidential,” and protected by “attorney-client privilege,” Mr. Conti effectively placed them into the public record, allowing taxpayers to see internal discussions that otherwise would likely have remained hidden.  Mr. Conti apparently did so solely on his own initiative.

Ironically, the very complaint intended to criticize one Board member for asking questions and revealing confidential Board deliberations, instead exposed a culture of governance that deserves far greater public scrutiny.

Leadership Is Measured by Fairness

Every superintendent in New Jersey will eventually inherit a divided Board at some point in their career. The best superintendents understand that disagreement is part of representative government.

They don’t try to silence dissent.  They don’t identify allies and opponents.  They don’t help isolate Board members who ask uncomfortable questions or seek additional information to inform their votes.  And they certainly don’t make efforts to drive individual Board members off of the Board.

Instead, they ensure that every Board of Education member has equal access to information and relevant documents, equal professional support, and equal respect.  Those are not political decisions; they are leadership decisions.

The Conti-gate documents from Randolph suggest an administration that, at least in these communications, departed from that standard.  Rather than serving as a bridge between differing viewpoints, the Randolph superintendent clearly became part of the divide.

Whether intentional or not, the result is the same.  Public trust erodes.  Board relationships deteriorate.  Governance suffers.

Students Pay the Price

When board meetings become battlegrounds instead of places where ideas are debated openly, attention shifts away from the classroom.  Instead of discussing student achievement, academic performance, sound school district policymaking, school safety, facilities, or fiscal stewardship, time and energy is spent managing internal conflict.

That is perhaps the greatest cost of all.

Students deserve better.  Taxpayers deserve better.  Board members deserve superintendents who serve all Board members equally, not just those with whom she agrees or can count on as a consistent “yes” vote.

Professional neutrality is not optional.  It is one of the superintendent’s most fundamental responsibilities.

Kathryn Ramirez got it exactly right:  Boards may be divided.  The superintendent cannot be.