I attended the Bordentown BOE meeting on Feb. 20 to speak about the negative impact that a recent policy change to staff professional development days would have on families with special needs children. However, that chance was denied. According to BOE President Lisa Hartman, my “time” had expired by asking questions on the proposed school budget.
Ms. Hartman blatantly violated policy 9325.5 in her attempt to limit public comment on the school calendar topic. Numerous township residents attended the meeting with a handful wishing to speak about the impact that using delayed openings instead of the current process of half days to accommodate the training needs. The BOE solution is to have the affected working parents to incur additional cost for their ill-conceived policy change. Not one parent group was notified of the proposal or any attempt made to gather impact information it would have on working parents.
Besides the policy violation by Ms. Hartman, the lack of respect for the taxpaying parents of the township and the lack of concern for the impact this will have on working parents and parents of special needs children are very disturbing. The reading of a prepared statement on the topic at the end of public comments and not answering one question from any of the parents is unacceptable. The refusal of Ms. Hartman to answer questions from the public is either lack leadership ability or a lack of justification for the change.
The township pays almost 80 percent of the school budget and we have six of nine members on the BOE. Can one of our six representatives explain why a township representative is not leading the BOE? We need our representatives to represent us. Only one member, Mark Drew, spoke out about limiting the speakers, the other five members sat silent.
Mike Dauber, Bordentown Township
