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February 7, 2024Education Department Staffers Tell It Like It Is As They Welcome New Commissioner
Staff members at the New Jersey Department of Education (DOE) are hailing the departure of Acting Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan and the arrival of her replacement, Kevin Dehmer. One staff member (all interviewed for this story have requested anonymity) said exuberantly, “it’s like the coming of the Messiah.”
Dehmer has fifteen years of experience at the DOE, including serving as the Assistant Commissioner and Chief Financial Officer. For the last two years he has been Executive Director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University,
“We hope he will improve things,” said one staffer. Another explained, “we’re overjoyed because we know he respects fairness” and would be “mortified” to hear of the current state of affairs. “We’re sure no one has told him,” she added.
Yet he’ll be entering a department where morale, according to employees, is “beyond bad” and “toxic.”
According to staff members, the downward slide started in 2018 with Gov. Phil Murphy’s appointment of Lamont Repollet as Education Commissioner. and has continued through the administration of Allen-McMillan. Reportedly the office with the worst working conditions is the Division of Teaching and Learning Services, headed by Assistant Commissioner Dr. Jorden Schiff.
Staff members in that division claim multiple violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which makes it unlawful to discriminate in employment against a qualified individual with a disability. Even when a staff member has a doctor’s verification that he or she needs accommodations in the workplace, they allege, these ADA needs are ignored.
Staffers report discrimination against Black women, some of whom have filed formal complaints. NJ Ed Report was told that when women of color apply for more senior positions, they don’t even receive an acknowledgement while women of all races have “experienced retaliation for speaking up.” When they complain to the Office of Human Resources, they are ignored. Multiple grievances have been filed.
When staff members request transfers to other divisions, these requests are ignored because granting them would“reflect badly” on Allen-Millan.
When new Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action officer Michelle Whitmore was brought in, she was “inundated” with files. It is so bad that people have started filing complaints with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
A culture of nepotism, which flourished with Repollet, has continued under Allen-McMillan’s watch, with highly-placed administrators hiring friends who are not qualified instead of looking elsewhere.
One staff member I spoke to has been with the DOE through seven different Commissioners. She says, “it was much better pre-Repollet.”
There are more than 100 unfilled positions. The DOE, said one employee, is “grossly understaffed” and there is a trend of people taking early retirements. “It’s as if management is being protected but what about the civil servants?”
Mary Beth Koruth of the Record (paywalled) previously reported,
“Insiders say Allen-McMillan was sometimes difficult for department employees to reach, though external K-12 groups have said she was accessible.
Allen-McMillan almost never directly addressed the press after taking over in 2020, even as schools made unprecedented and now controversial changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring some combination of masks, social distancing and remote learning until the public health emergency was lifted two years later.
Then came big drops in K-12 scores and graduation readiness, all linked to the pandemic, and the culture wars that seized local school boards and became political fodder when the state revised its sex education standards to make them more progressive. Allen-McMillan defended those standards with a rousing rebuttal at a Senate budget committee hearing in 2022.
“Most of us who have worked in New Jersey education and are committed to positively challenging the status quo know Kevin well,” said Paula White, head of the K-12 watchdog group JerseyCan. She welcomed his nomination “as the state continues to grapple with how to support all students in meeting basic grade-level standards,” she said in a statement.”
5 Comments
I was there also. Two former colleagues said that after Chris Huber was brought it, a huge flood of work that had been piling up gushed out of the office like a flood. I was there to speak about the Interdistrict Choice Program. The two Field Office folks didn’t seem to know much about the program. 11 schools have quit the program, and most schools have waiting lists. Also, a lot of districts wanted to join but were told no more could be added.
Mr. Dehmer would be smart to converse with the teacher-certification staff. The abuse in that sector has been enormous under puppet dictators, one of whom is still employed with the office, and with at least one staff member, a black woman, denied a promotion, even though she came out first on a staffing list. She was denied because she did not play the hush-hush game, while another did, and that one unjustly received the upgrade and now lends little to the office.
The certification staff has been told to turn a blind eye and engage in unethical practices, like the allowance of NJCTL, which lacks proper accreditation. Mr. Dehmer needs to understand this, so that healing, justice and true productivity may begin.
It’s sad that people believe this switch is a form of salvation. Dehmer was chosen by Murphy. That, in itself, spells trouble. Hopefully, the worst that will happen is that nothing will happen. Those who’ve suffered will continue to suffer. Dehmer, at best, can only stop the process from worsening. He will not improve it.
The Division of Teacher and Learning Services has been the most coddled and privileged of any in the DOE. How ironic that it be the focus of claimed injustice. Perhaps its boohoo members would like to step into the shoes of those who have real reason to complain! Really, the damn nerve!
As for Kevin Dehmer, he will do nothing to improve the status quo. More employees will quit and move on to other sectors. More will enter early retirement. A candidate selected by Murphy is nothing but a high-ranking stooge, no matter how much they might wish to have a positive impact. Sad but true.
Wake up, people!
To fix the DOE, Kevin Dehmer needs to look first at its center. That center is the teacher certification unit. It has been neglected and misguided for a number of years. The long-term certification director is a puppet who does not respect her staff and the employee who now runs the evaluator group has little or no interaction with her people and when she does interact, she is ineffective and biased to higher-up stupidity. There has been endless talk of this throughout counties and even within individual schools. A DOE acquaintance says that more emphasis is placed on unnecessary website projects than the important review of teacher credentials. This should not stand. Certain staff members need to be replaced or transferred from this unit and pronto. Those who have been trained to do the reviews should be allowed to do so without interference. Once the bad apples are removed, the rest will fall into place. If Dehmer would only meet with the evaluators on an individual basis, he would gain so much valuable insight. How about it, Mr. Dehmer? If you really want to make a positive impact, this is the best way to start.