The Jersey City school district administration and a group of Board of Education members are refusing to acknowledge Dejon Morris as board president, a decision the first-year board member says will hurt the district in the long run.
“I don’t need them to acknowledge me as president,” said Morris, who is staking his claim to the presidency aftera wild board meeting last week in which five members voted to oust the current president and vice president, and then voted in Morris as president and Younass Barkouch as vice president.
“I need them first to acknowledge their job as trustee and the mandate of providing a budget,” said Morris, who was the subject of an ethics complaint just two days before Thursday’s chaotic meeting.
As the March 20 deadline to approve a school budget draws nearer, it remains unclear whether the vote to remove Natalia Ioffe as president and Noemi Velazquez as vice president was legal. Ioffe, Velazquez and two other board members, George Blount and Alpa Patel, along with Superintendent Norma Fernandez left the meeting before the separate votes.
Fernandez said Wednesday it’s inappropriate to comment “on those questions and those concerns that have come up out of last Thursday’s meeting, since I do not know if that meeting was ever legal and actions taken were correct. At this point, our understanding is that Natalia Ioffe is the board president and we’re unable to predict what will happen on March 20.”
Acting as president, Morris says he has made numerous attempts to reach out to Fernandez and Business Administrator Dennis Frohnapfel to set up two special budget meetings before the March 20 due date. Morris says district leaders are plotting to make the board look “disgruntled and dysfunctional” to force the budget to sent to County Superintendent Melissa Pearce to be approved.
“This is all a plot and I think it needs to be brought to the forefront. This is very dangerous what they are doing,” Morris said. “I believe the superintendent is attempting to stall to prove her theory of dysfunction. The administration is neglecting its responsibility to report to the board, not the president.”
Patel, Blount and Ioffe refuse to acknowledge the board’s alleged new leadership. Velazquez, who was elected along with Ioffe by a 5-4 vote in January, did not respond to a request for comment.
Ioffe said she’s “confident the state (Department of Education) will provide (clarity) because it is an urgent matter.” But in the meantime, she says she has “no intention on hindering any responsibilities we have as board members.
A spokesman for the state Department of Education and Velazquez could not be reached for comment.
Fernandez told The Jersey Journal on Friday that in the event the board can not pass the budget, the county superintendent can step in to make the approval. A meeting has been set for March 18, a regularly scheduled caucus meeting, to vote on the budget.
Special meetings to present the budget and hear public comment are commonplace, but not required. For the first time since 2018, the district is facing no cuts in the state aid that is announced annually after the state budget is presented. Last year the board approved the first $1 billion budget in the district’s history.
Tuesday Morris shared with the county superintendent his frustration with the administration, saying in an email his request for two special meetings, as well as a budget calendar, updates on what has been completed and a copy of the preliminary draft of the budget were ignored.
“The JCBOE board of trustees is still actively trying to keep an open communication in order to stay in compliance with the budget process that is mandated by state law,” Morris told Pearce.
Morris told The Jersey Journal “Me being president is not the issue. The issue is (Fernandez) is failing to reply to an elected board regarding meetings and a draft of a budget and budget calendar.”
Morris, Barkouch, and fellow board members Paula Jones-Watson, Afaf Muhammad and Chris Tisdale cited lack of action and accountability by Ioffe and Velazquez for the 5-0 vote against their leadership Thursday, although the board members did not cite any examples.
Morris also says Frohnapfel has not responded to calls and emails to sign a contract with the Souder, Shabazz & Woolridge Law Group as special counsel for the board, the only resolution approved by the remaining board members Thursday’s.
The law firm was at theroot of the ethics complaint filed by Ioffe, who claimed that the fact Morris met with the firm’s principals in November indicates a possible “personal promise or private action” that compromises the board.
