Jennifer Kraemer and Christopher Scales have spent the last few years watching the Hamilton Township Board of Education—and they haven’t always liked what they’ve seen.
Starting in January, they’ll have a chance to do more than hope for change.
Kraemer, Scales and incumbent Susan Lombardo each won three-year terms on the school board Nov. 4 in an election sure to change the dynamics of the body. Kraemer and Scales will replace incumbents Joe Malagrino and Patricia DelGiudice, who declined to run for re-election. Lombardo will regain the seat the board appointed her to after Stephanie Pratico resigned in April.
The election signals an end of an era for the Board of Education. The DelGiudice-Malagrino-Pratico slate played a key role in the 2012 corruption trial of former Hamilton mayor John Bencivengo, with charges Bencivengo attempted to influence Pratico to preserve the contact of school district’s then-health insurance broker. That broker, Marliese Ljuba, testified she gave money to a who’s who in Hamilton, including thousands of dollars to the 2011 re-election fund of DelGiudice, as well as the campaign fund for her entire slate. DelGiudice and Pratico each won new terms that year, with Malagrino earning his first—and only—term.
Then, two months ago, DelGiudice and Malagrino raised eyebrows during an Oct. 1 special session of the board, with DelGiudice accusing Malagrino of holding secret meetings and Malagrino responding, “That is so much [expletive].” Malagrino then issued a three-minute defense of himself that included threats he would expose the board’s dirty laundry.
“I didn’t start this, but I’m going to finish it,” Malagrino said at one point, refusing to stop despite repeated attempts by other board members to calm him.
The very purpose of the Oct. 1 meeting also caused concern, with the board gathering to discuss charges the board’s attorney, Joe Betley, had investigated, without the consent of the board, an anonymous email sent to board members and the media. The email contained a list of charges against Malagrino and superintendent James Parla that would qualify, at the very least, as an abuse of power if true. While the board did nothing with the charges, it did vote to dismiss Betley, with Malagrino has the lone dissenter.
Kraemer said she wasn’t in attendance Oct. 1, but the meeting made clear to her the school board needs to reexamine how it works.
“The board members need to sit down, and really think about how they want to run the district,” Kraemer said. “The bickering doesn’t hold well. You have to lead by example. You can’t say everything in the district is running smoothly when you can’t even run a meeting as professionals.”
Kraemer, 39, has three children in district schools, and formerly served as the Hamilton Township PTA Committee president and president of the Yardville Elementary School PTA. She also went through the township school district, attending Kisthardt Elementary School, Grice Middle School and Hamilton High School West. She started attending board meetings two-and-a-half years ago to better understand what was going on within the district.
“The students have taken a back seat,” she said. “We need to put the students first, not the personal interests. It’s hard to sit through a meeting, and not hear students mentioned once. It’s sad.”
At this time last year, Scales was one of those students. The 18-year-old Rider University freshman spent the last three years as the board’s Steinert High School student liaison, a non-voting member of the school board. Scales, 18, graduated from Steinert in June, and currently is a global studies and political science major at Rider. At some point last year, he realized he had grown frustrated with how the board approached some issues, and decided to run.
He agreed with Kraemer’s assessment of the board’s dynamics. He, too, has noticed board members drifting out of the professional realm into personal attacks.
“It’s OK to disagree with somebody, but we have to do it in a professional manner,” Scales said. “There are ways of doing that. Yelling and bickering are not one of those ways.”
The Hamilton Township Board of Education has a recent history of unrest. Longtime board member Elric Cicchetti resigned in February 2012, citing frustration with how the board operated. Seven months later, in September 2012, another board stalwart, Ron Tola, announced he wouldn’t run for re-election because the board had become “dysfunctional.” Seven ethics complaints have been filed against township school board members in the last five years, although none since 2012.
A review of Hamilton Township School district’s internal controls conducted between March 2013 and February 2014 revealed several inconsistencies, including discrepancies between the Treasurer’s and Secretary’s report, a miscoding of some financial data which understated administrative cost, a lack of segregation of duties in the purchasing department, booking encumbrances at the end of the year which led to some checks never being mailed, and a sick leave bank in 2010 where preference was given to some employees, according to minutes of the board’s Sept. 22 meeting.
The district has faced challenges, but going forward, it also should have something of a fresh start. Come January, only one active school board member, Richard Kanka, will have served on the board before 2013. This school board will have the responsibility to replace Parla, who will retire in January.
It must nail that hire, Kraemer said, since the next superintendent will affect all the other issues facing the district, such as updating facilities and bolstering student achievement. And all those issues have an effect on whether Hamiltonians view their school district positively, which Kraemer suggested may be the most important ingredient for restoring faith in the district.
“It’s important to develop that sense of community and the pride in the community,” Kraemer said. “A lot of that begins in the schools. I want our students going to school in Hamilton and feeling proud about it.”
