Division Among BOE Members Boils Over

Rancor among factions of the was evident Tuesday as a battle over committee assignments spilled into the public session during the board’s regular meeting.

Melissa Peters, board president, apparently switched members’ assignments to the panel’s various subcommittees when she took the helm of the board after member Eva Applegate resigned the presidency two months ago.

The committee assignment shuffle rankled newly elected board members and , both of whom vociferously opposed the new assignments on grounds that it violated the board’s own bylaws. Cervantes brought up the objections at the top of the meeting.

Cervantes argued that the committee assignments are to last one year, according to the bylaws, and that if they were to be changed, the bylaws would need to be changed first, which was not done.

“I think the bylaws need to be changed before the committees get changed,’’ Cervantes said.

Peters, who later said she , also said it was the board president’s prerogative to make committee assignments, also citing other portions of the panel’s bylaws.

“I did try to keep everyone on as many committees as they were, but what I did was I put everyone on four committees so that everyone had an equal chance,’’ Peters said. “Just for work-flow purposes as well as to try to put everyone together as a team.’’

An occasionally testy, verbal tug-of-war ensued among Moonan, Cervantes and Peters, with each citing different portions of the board’s bylaws in support of their positions.

“You can’t make a change without making a change to the bylaws,’’ Moonan said. “I request that we go back to our original committees.”

No part of the board’s bylaws, however, cover a committee shuffle mid-year following the resignation of a board president, since that has never happened before, according to Michael Gross, board attorney.

Several minutes into the lengthy discussion that had begun to devolve, Peters ended the argument with a decisive impromptu speech:

“I just want everyone to be aware that I did not want this position, to be president of the Board of Ed,’’ Peters said. “No one else on this committee would step up and do it, so I did it.

“When I became president, I just wanted to be fair. The amount of hours and the amount of discussion that has been put in this is absolutely ridiculous. We will go back to the original committees as they were set by Eva (Applegate) and we will move forward.

 “I did not intend in any way to cause any problems. I came forward to be president to help this group move together, and I just want it to be fair. For it to look like I was doing anything differently does a disservice to the full board. I will go back to the original way that the committees were, and we will move on.’’

Peters' speech was met with applause from the standing-room-only audience in the media center of the , where throngs of teachers and their union representatives had come to speak about their frustration over contract talks that have stalled for two years.

“We are not going away,’’ said Joseph Martin, president of the Wall Township Education Association, which represents the district’s teachers and other employees. “We’ll be back every month.’’