The Jersey Journal Editorial Board originally published this here.

So here we are again. Not two years after Jersey City finally convinced the state that it could run New Jersey’s second-largest school district without a monitor looking over its shoulder, our leaders are running back to Trenton to settle a squabble in the sandbox.

The city’s 27,000 children deserve much better than this.

They deserve to learn in safe and supportive environments, and in clean, modern facilities – not buildings with bathrooms that don’t work.

They deserve regular access to the internet; well-stocked and staffed libraries; teachers and administrators at the top of their games; challenging and enriching curricula; a broad spectrum of extracurricular activities; in-school health and wellness services; and guidance counselors who will help them follow their dreams.

Mostly, those 27,000 children deserve to have adults in their lives who believe they deserve every chance at a good future – and who won’t let the slings and arrows of the adult world stand in their way.

But that’s not who Jersey City’s kids have in their corner. Instead, their fate is in the hands of a Board of Education that can’t see past its own conflicts and ambitions to put children first.

The Feb. 29 board meeting that devolved into a coup had nothing to do with the education or wellbeing of children. Rather, it seemed to boil down to an unexplained urgent push to hire an outside law firm and a simmering dispute over the school system’s business administrator.

In a scene more suited to “Game of Thrones” than a school board meeting, two trustees – DeJon Morris and Younass Mohamed Barkouch – tried to force a vote on removing the board vice president, which President Natalia Ioffe said wouldn’t be proper procedure.

Morris kept repeating the request and then claimed he was “suspending” Ioffe, after which Ioffe said she was putting the meeting into recess and left the room with three other board members and school administrators. Ioffe later said tempers were heating up and she was concerned for everyone’s safety.

Morris, Barkouch and the three other remaining board members – one of whom was participating by phone – then voted to remove the vice president and president and elect Morris president and Barkouch vice president.

Changing the leadership of a public body is a serious choice, especially just weeks before the annual budget is due. Both state law and the board’s own bylaws set forth a process that requires specific cause, careful consideration, and a full, formal discussion before pulling a switch. There was none of that here. Instead, Jersey City experienced a game of disruptive musical chairs reminiscent of the recent struggles to find a Speaker of the House in Washington.

Morris and Barkouch were wrong to plow ahead without getting a determination on proper procedure as were trustees Paula Jones-Watson, Afaf Muhammad and Christopher Tisdale, who then voted without real discussion for the hastily called measure.

Just a year and a half out of state control, it’s beyond scandalous that Jersey City’s public schools are in this situation, especially at this time of year when the board should be carefully reviewing the district’s $1 billion – you read that right – budget.

Fingers can be pointed in so many directions, but let’s start with the Jersey City teachers union, which handpicked all nine of the current trustees, making sure they had the support and resources to prevail on Election Day. Has the JCEA’s well-oiled steamroller focused too narrowly on assuring the union wins favorable contracts, keeping better qualified candidates who are passionate about children’s education in the losing column?

Also looming large is the controversy involving Business Administrator Regina Robinson, whom Superintendent of Schools Norma Fernandez placed on administrative leave in 2022. According to documents filed by Fernandez and the district’s acting administrator following the Feb. 29 debacle, the board held an executive session a week before the Leap Day meeting and declined, by a 5-4 vote, to certify tenure charges Fernandez had placed against Robinson over allegations of financial mismanagement.

Robinson and her case deserve the board’s utmost attention, but — as in the case of Morris’ demand to hire the outside lawyers he’d met at an Atlantic City convention – it cannot blind the trustees to their sworn duty to the city’s schoolchildren and taxpayers.

The whole mess is now in the hands of the state Office of Administrative Law, which has set a hearing for Wednesday. We urge the OAL to quickly rule on the questions of what was or wasn’t done at the Feb. 29 meeting and who the school board president and vice president are. The OAL decision should then be immediately accepted by all so the business of the district can move forward.

Fernandez has also asked the state Department of Education to put Jersey City schools back under a state monitor until all the issues raised by the Leap Day showdown are addressed. We hope the warring trustees will step back from the brink before Trenton steps in and the district once again loses some of its local control.

Disagreements between board members can be healthy and useful – if they are grounded in facts and keep the stakes for children firmly in focus. That has not been the case so far.

Those who cannot abide by the rules or act in the interests of students and taxpayers should have the decency to resign or be replaced at the ballot box.