Followup on 2/24/2025 BOE Meeting re: Jesus School, WAS Closure, Theatrical Academy

The South Hunterdon BOE meeting tonight covered a lot of ground. For context, see our pre-meeting article analyzing the agenda items first if you haven't already.

Note to BOE/district administration folks: please make audio at your meetings work within the room. Many audience members could not hear most of what was being said by the quieter participants. South Hunterdon has spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on A/V equipment and professionals over the past 5 years, and the stone-age microphones and speakers at the Board meetings is disappointing to say the least.

Matilda Performance

The meeting opened with a mix of scenes from the play Matilda that the High School will be featuring in the next few weeks. The performance was marred only by the typical A/V issues that plague the high school. Many personal mics were not working and the kids had to rotate through a shared mic stand.

Roll Call

Board member Kevin Kovoleski claimed to be present remotely via video conferencing, but throughout the meeting was shown only as a blank screen, and he did not respond at any of the calls for votes through the meeting.

Student Rep to BOE

The BOE has decided to seat the student representative to the board at the literal BOE table. It was difficult to hear given the audio issues, but his report seemed focused predominantly on sports. It is impressive that the student representative stayed until nearly the end of the meeting when the Board president recognized he was still present.

It is not entirely clear what purpose this role serves to the Board.

LAEF Update

Next up was an update from the LAEF (https://www.thelaef.org). LAEF is an independent local non profit organization (often called an "NGO") that fund raises for the schools and then chooses programs to provide grants for locally. Their most recent fund raiser coming up is a newer combined Auction/Casino night on March 29, 2025 at the Amwell Valley fire company.

LAEF is also working with guidance counselors to identify students for an unspecified set of student awards.

It should be noted that the LAEF role in the district is a bit unusual. Given that the all-in budget for SHRSD for the 2024/25 school year is $31 million, it is not clear why we need a 501(c)(3) volunteer organization, seemingly centered on Lambertville, performing fund raisers for the district and offering grants to the school. This is not necessarily a criticism but more of a question mark to the LAEF folks and the district. A potential problem here is that LAEF is choosing what grants to fund, which gives a small number of people enormous influence over the district. Their special slot at every public BOE meeting is testament to this. For those interested, the 2023 tax return for LAEF is located here. In that year, it appears LAEF paid South Hunterdon approximately $20,000 in grants in 2023. Prior year grants were much higher, all the way up to $85K in grants in 2019.

PTO Update

An incredibly detailed PTO update was given over the course of several minutes, most of which could not be heard by the audience and was lost on this correspondent.

Correspondence

As usual, Board President Gallagher refused to acknowledge either the number or nature of correspondence received by the Board, and would not show it on the screen.

In addition to the correspondence from Doug Sheetz documented in our previous article, Mike Spille also sent in an extensive rant railing against the district here.

NJ School Board Association Ethics Presentation

A new member of the NJSBA was present to provide yearly ethics training to the Board. As mentioned, the presentation is radically different from prior years.

The new representative seemed to struggle with the purpose and background of the Commission, puzzling out loud as to why many of its seats have gone unfilled for years, and not even mentioning that every member's seat is expired at this point in time. In addition, she erroneously indicated that the Board requires 6 votes for a quorum, when in fact there are only 6 current sitting members, and only four members are needed provide a quorum (and has).

The NJSBA representative did not acknowledge any of the current or recent ethics complaints against the board, nor is it clear if she was even aware of them.

Superintendent Update

The Superintendent rushed through most of his update to focus predominantly on the "Performing Arts Academy" concept. Prior to getting to the Academy concpet, he acknowledged that they were leaning towards renting the Jesus School next year for PreK for $75K, that WAS was closing and they were still chasing a sale price, but glossed over critical issues, such as the WAS sale price estimate being months late, and WAS having contaminated water for months with no end or solution in sight. The Superintendent also continues his habit of saying what "will" happen in the future, when these items all require a Board vote - which has not occurred yet.

As mentioned, the focus was on the Performing Arts Academy. While the presentation could be viewed from a few different lenses on what the district is trying to achieve here, the Superintendent pulled no punches and left no doubt. This is all about money. While talking about local students vs. students coming in from out of district, the Superintendent indicated that "a few locals might be admitted", but the focus "is on the tuition money" from out-of- district students. Suozzo also looked eager to, and we quote, "get a piece of the pie" from Polytech, and he later added "using Polytech also opens their budgets up to us to utilize" for projects such as converting conventional classrooms into dance class rooms.

When Board members asked about the planning and budgeting process, Superintendent Suozzo stressed this was still early days, and that part of the purpose of the auditions was to gauge interest in the program. If enough non-resident applications are not approved, the program would not go forward.

This is somewhat confusing, as the proposed tuition for this program is just over $10,000 a year per student, but the 2024/25 per-pupil expenditures by the district is over $27,000 per pupil. The Superintendent could not articulate how this could be made to work financially. Adding 40 new students to the district at a loss would not seem to be a fiscally prudent move.

The Superintendent stressed that this program would not be limited only to Hunterdon County residents, but could be utilized by "any NJ student interested in participating who does not have a comparable program in their local district".

Superintendent Suozzo believes all of this can be achieved without adding any students or other employees to the district, and that a single theater teacher can handle this additional load. When pressed for details he effectively indicated they were all still TBD.

It is not lost on us that the Superintendent's graphic for this Performing Arts Academy (shown above), which is entirely about Theater and Dance, includes a picture of school books, an apple and the physics equation "e=mc2".

Board Members expressions during the Superintendent's presentation on the Academy ranged from bored to confused to slightly alarmed at different sections.

Public Comment Period #1

Public comment opened with the usual 3 minute stopwatch clock on the screen, and admonishment from the Board President not to violate their laundry list of rules.

Matt Larkin of Lambertville asked about budgeting for the Lambertville Academy, and was told this was still TBD as the Superintendent meets with Polytech and other officials.

Mike Spille of West Amwell indicated that Superintendent Suozzo's own numbers show that the High School today is 20% choice students. In a worse case scenario, if all 40 "Academy" students were accepted from out of district, he indicated that that number would raise to one third of the High School population. Mr. Spille ended in a near-shout, "In a time when neighboring districts are contemplating 6% budget raises, extensive loans, or even outright bankruptcy, it is incredible to hear our tiny district contemplating these kinds of programs. Where is the money coming from for all this? Wake up!".

Andrea Little of West Amwell re-iterated her call to consider ending Choice at the Elementary School level, particularly when the district is considering renting space for PreK in Lambertville. For the record, there are 41 "Choice" students in grades K-8, with 18 of them attending LPS. "Elementary Choice" is making less and less sense as the district is seeing budget and space crunches.

Remainder of Meeting

The remainder of the meeting was relatively brief and boilerplate, and again the poor A/V made it very difficult to follow individual Board member's commentary.

Brian Keyes gave an overview of Buildings, Grounds, Transportation, Finance, Safety (and the kitchen sink?) Committee. There was unanimous vote yes for all agenda items, with Kevin Kovoleski not responding on video.

Gina Fischetti gave an overview of Personnel actions, with a unaninmous vote (and Kovoleski not responding).

Michael Strouse spoke to Curriculum and Technology. Given that C&T had no agenda items or meeting notes in the agenda, the audio issues in the room made trying to decipher Mr. Strouse's commentary particularly frustrating.

Martha Dennis addressed Policy, with Roni Todd-Marino taking School and Community.

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The administration and BOE chose to place the Superintendent update and material Board matters after the Matiilda performance, the LAEF update, the extensive PTO update, and then the NJSBA's very long school ethics presentation and commentary. As a result, items of interest to the audience were not heard until over an hour into the meeting after 8pm. A coincidence? You tell us.