Board seats go begging
No candidates for two BOE seats; only Lewis seeks re-election
BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer

There are three seats up for grabs on the Red Bank Board of Education and as of the Monday filing deadline, only one board candidate.

According to Business Administrator Frances Finkelstein, only incumbent board member Juanita Lewis filed a petition to run for her second three-year term by the 4 p.m. deadline.

The two other seats up for election are currently filled by David Tarver and Mary-Ellen Mess, neither of whom chose to run for re-election.

According to Finkelstein, the board will have to appoint two people to one-year terms to fill the vacant seats within 60 days of the April 18 election.

Tarver was elected with Lewis in 2003 and will complete his first three-year term on the board in April.

Mess was elected to her first three-year term in 1994, said Finkelstein, and had indicated in advance that she would not run for re-election for what would have been her fifth term.

The election will take place on April 18, at which time voters will also vote on the district’s budget for the 2006-2007 school year.

“Sometimes people just aren’t inclined to run a campaign,” Dr. Robert Mahon, interim superintendent, said on Monday, just after the deadline for submission of petitions to run for a seat on the board. “Often people are willing to serve but don’t want to put themselves on a ballot, for whatever reason.”

Mahon said that after the election the board will advertise the two vacancies and must appoint new board members for two one-year terms. Those appointed would then have to run for re-election to complete the remaining two years of the terms.

Because the terms on the school board are staggered, this means there will be five openings on the school board next year, including the three, three-year term seats that will come up for election in 2007.

Tarver and Mess will remain as board members until April 25 when the board will hold its reorganization meeting.

In January, Tarver tendered his resignation from the Red Bank Education and Development Initiative, an organization he helped found whose aim was to focus the various sectors of the community on the needs of all Red Bank children.

Tarver cited discord between the Red Bank Public School District and the Red Bank Charter School as one of the reasons for leaving his position as president of the initiative.

At the time of his resignation, Tarver announced that he would not seek re-election to the school board.

Tensions between the public school district and the charter school have escalated as financial pressures on the public school district have mounted.

State law requires the district to make a transfer payment of funds to the charter school from the public school budget. Last year the payment amounted to $1.6 million.

That payment, in conjunction with the budgetary restrictions of state mandated restrictions on school budgets, are cited by district officials as contributing to a $600,000 shortfall the district is facing.

The situation was cited by former Red Bank school Superintendent Dr. John Krewer as a reason for his resignation in January to take a position in the Spotswood school district in Middlesex County.

In addition, the public school district is involved in litigation with the charter school, based on the claim that the racial make up of the charter school does not accurately reflect that of the borough as a whole or the borough public school system in particular.

According to Armen McOmber, the attorney representing the borough school district, this leaves the district with the responsibility to educate a larger percentage children who speak English as a second language than the charter school, at a cost that is rising along with the district’s burgeoning ESL student population.