by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – The Newark Public Schools system may be in an institutional race against time in getting back the Maple Avenue Elementary School building through New Jersey Superior Court-Newark.
NPS, in its now-10-month old lawsuit against the Newark Housing Authority, is looking to void its sale. The plaintiffs claim that NHA was not transparent in its $1.2 million sale to 33 Maple Urban Renewal LLC/Hanini Group Dec. 28, 2017.
The state’s largest public school system further asserts that NHA’s “lack of transparency” in that sale amounted to violating its “right of return” clause in its 2016 deed conveyance contract. NPS transferred the deeds of Maple Avenue School and 11 other buildings to the housing authority for $1 each.
NHA had found a buyer in 33 Maple/Hanini, who then removed its asbestos and was converting the 1925-built 31 classrooms into apartments. Hanini then sold 33-47 Maple Ave. to The Friends of TEAM Charter School March 19, 2020 for $10 million.
Maple Avenue School, should a judge agree with NPS and void the NHA-33 Maple/Hanini sale, would be taken from the Friends of TEAM Charter School. Friends of TEAM is an independent fundraiser for KIPP:NJ, who has 11 charter schools in Newark and are planning for three more.
KIPP Seek Academy School Leader Valerie Arroyo, in her Feb. 5 letter to families, said that the school is still on track to move into Maple Avenue School for the 2021-22 school year. KIPP Seek would be moving out as a tenant from the third floor of 100 Aldine St., some four blocks northwest of MAS.
“100 Aldine, 3rd Flr.” is the western entrance and top level of NPS’s George Washington Carver-Bruce Street School building. NPS, as its colocation part of its then “One Newark” plan, started leasing out that floor to KIPP’s TEAM SPARK Academy Aug. 1, 2011.
IRVINGTON – The earthly path of Fred M. Bost, Irvington’s first African American councilman, ended with a burial at Wrightstown’s Brig. Gen. William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery after a funeral at Barnegat’s Bayside Chapel Feb. 26.
Bost, 82, who died in Barnegat Feb. 21, was elected majority of registered East Ward voters first for 1980-84 and again 2000-04 under respective mayors Robert H. Miller and Sarah B. Bost. F. Bost, between council terms, served on the township’s planning and zoning boards serving mayors J. Walter Jonkoski, Michael G. Steele, S. Bost and Wayne Smith.
Bost was part of a growing African American community here who rose from 40 percent in the 1980 U.S. Census to 81.66 percent in 2000. Steele was the first African American elected to the Irvington Public Schools Board of Education in 1980 and as mayor in 1990. Wife Sarah was Irvington’s first African American woman mayor 1994-2002.
The then-Essex County Sheriff’s Office administrator, before running for councilman, won a 1979 East Ward District Leader’s race against two Democratic Committee-favored candidates. He then established the Fred Bost Civic Association.
Bost, after his 2003 retirement to Baregat’s Four Seasons at Mirage, was appointed to that township’s planning board. He became a voice for Barnegat’s African Americans, whose population rose from .53 percent in 2000 to 6.75 in 2020.
Bost’s earthly entry was as the youngest of 11 children March 12, 1938 in Monroe, N.C. His formal education followed with his and his family’s residencies: North Carolina, Washington, D.C., Detroit, a hitch in the U.S. Army (into 1958), Essex County and Bloomfield colleges. He was also promoted through the state civil service until he was appointed as Essex County’s Assistant Director of Community Affairs.
Bost’s death leaves brother John, who lives in the Philippines, as the last of the 11 siblings. Sarah, sons Olatungi and Kenneth, daughters Nina, Kimberly, Latasha and Sybil; 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren also survive.
EAST ORANGE – Relatives of city resident Christopher Meikle, 46, held his last rites at Newark’s Perry Funeral Home Feb. 26 – while the man authorities say is responsible for his Feb. 15 death remains held in Elizabeth’s Union County Jail.
First responders, including the N.J. State Police and local EMS medics, were responding to a two car collision just past the Garden State Parkway’s southbound Clark Centennial Avenue Exit 136 when they found Meikle’s four-door Lexus on fire by the center median around mile marker 136.1 at 2:45 a.m. Feb. 15.
Troopers, aided by Clark firefighters and police officers extricated Meikle, who was then rushed by medics to RWJ University Hospital Rahway. Meikle, who was born Aug. 3, 1974, was pronounced dead there 3:35 a.m.
Medics also transported the driver of the white four-door Range Rover SUV -identified as Ronaldo Godwin, 43, of Newark to Newark’s University Hospital for treatment of his serious injuries. Godwin, upon that hospital’s release, was remanded to Union County Prosecutor’s Office custody.
State Police and UCPO Homicide Task Force detectives have found that Godwin had rear-ended Meikle’s Lexus “at high speed”; 55 mph is the Parkway’s posted speed limit there. The impact put Godwin’s Range Rover on its passenger side – and ruptured the Lexus’ fuel tank. Another driver told detectives that Godwin approached him and asked to be taken away from the crash scene with an offer of an unspecified amount of cash.
Godwin was charged Feb. 17 with second-degree counts of death by auto and witness tampering. Each count carries up to 20 years’ maximum state prison terms if found guilty.
ORANGE – Students, parents and other Orange Public Schools community members should have received Schools Superintendent Dr. Gerald Fitzhugh II’s decision to postpone the district’s on-site and remote learning hybrid reopening model to April 19 by now.
Fitzhugh’s decision, which continues OPS Remote Synchronous, or Reopening Phase II plan B, now through April 16, was posted on the district’s website and Facebook page Feb. 22. The superintendent’s announcement was also featured on March 1’s Central School “Central Elementary News” monthly.
Postponing on-site and remote learning reopening Phase IV was made while he had consulted “with health officials” during the district’s scheduled Feb. 15-19 Winter Break.
“Again, the health and safety of all students and staff are the primary drivers regarding this decision,” said Fitzhugh.
Extending Phase II Plan B, which has been in effect since Oct. 5, means that teachers report to the district’s 11 schools twice a week, to teach remote learning from classrooms. Principals, assistant principals, secretaries and department heads also come on-site twice a week; Central Office staff four days a week.
Moving Phase IV’s April 19 start means that teachers and supports staff are to begin classroom preparations on April 12.
Fitzhugh’s announcement has also been posted in Spanish and Creole. Details may be found and questions left at: www.orange.k12.nj.us.
WEST ORANGE – The West Orange High School hockey team’s abbreviated 2020-21 season ended with an official 4-4 overall record Feb. 26 – or 6-4 if one includes their two bouts against the COVID-19 Coronavirus.
The WOHS Mountaineers came back from two virus test-induced quarantines to get as far as one of two New Jersey Interscholastic Ice Hockey League McMullen Cup semifinals, held Sunday night at Englewood’s MacKay Ice Arena.
Head Coach Eddie Scafidi’s squad started off with a 3-0 regular season start, including a Jan. 23 win against Parsippany here at the Richard Codey Arena, when some of its 17 members had tested positive for the coronavirus Jan. 26. The team had to be quarantined for 10 days, canceling its Feb. 6 welcoming of Newark’s Eastside High School. (EHS, unable to find a replacement team, also lost that date.)
The Mountaineers, looking to regain their ice legs, lost back-to-back games with Scotch Plains-Fanwood and Springfield’s Jonathan Dayton Feb. 12-13. Another round of COVID-positive tests put them back into a second mandatory 10-day isolation.
WOHS, despite finishing the regular season 3-3 with a Feb. 23 loss to Bayonne, qualified for NJIIHL’s McMullen Cup playoffs. It was one of the rare state high school sports associations that are holding postseason play this winter.
The Mountaineers won their first round, 4-3, against the Kearny Kardinals Feb. 23. They fell, 6-1, against the 2018 champions Frisch Cougars in Englewood Sunday night.
The first COVID outbreak, as reported Jan. 26 by West Orange Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Scot Cascone, also affected members of the Mountaineers’ boys and girls swimming teams. The WOHS girls’ squad are to finally start their season March 9 here at Seton Hall Prep and the boys March 12 at Caldwell’s West Essex Regional High School.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Those who regularly put their recycling into bins or onto curbs may want to pause during their next deposit in memory of the late longtime villager and legislator Harry McEnroe.
McEnroe, 90, who died Feb. 8 from cancer in Mantoloking, drafted what became “The McEnroe Act,” expanding solid waste recycling, while a state General Assemblyman in 1985. The longtime villager’s legislation helped reduce the use of landfills – and sponsored creating the N.J. Poison Control Center.
McEnroe, before retiring in 1996, had represented the village and neighboring towns either in Newark’s Essex County Hall of Records or Trenton’s State House for 23 years. He was an eight-term Assemblyman 1980-96.
The former longtime South Orange Democratic Committee Chairman was an Essex County Freeholder, including its Director in 1976, 1973-79. The award-winning Liberty Mutual Insurance sales executive was in the midst of his 30-year career from its 240 S. Harrison, St. East Orange tower office when the Our Lady of Sorrows parishioner became interested in politics.
Harry A. McEnroe, Jr. came to South Orange from Newark via Bonaventure, N.Y. and the U.S. Army. The Vailsburg native and Seton Hall Prep graduate was a scholar-athlete on St. Bonaventure University’s baseball and basketball teams and served a tour in the Army before returning to his father, Harry Sr.’s plumbing business.
Wife Margaret, sons Harry, Paul, Brian, Thomas, and Robert; daughters Elizabeth Hirsch and Moira Carey, seven grandsons and five granddaughters are among his survivors.
McEnroe’s Funeral Mass was celebrated in-person and on livestream Feb. 12 at Sea Girt’s St. Mark’s Church. Memorial donations may be made to: SHO, 120 Northfield Ave., West Orange, 07050; and/or St. Bonaventure University, PO Box 2519, 14778.
BLOOMFIELD – An East Orange man has been held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Center since his alleged Feb. 22 armed robbery and attempted arson of an Ampere here.
Elvis Holder, 54, has been charged with robbery, possession of a weapon and possession thereof for an unlawful purpose. Holder was arrested from an East Orange backyard Feb. 24 after his image matched that of the man in the surveillance video two days before here at 137 La France Ave.
The employee told BPD’s Detective Bureau and Crime Scene Unit that the suspect had entered DJ&H Newsstand at 7:55 p.m. that Monday and asked her to play some NJ Lottery numbers for him.
She then described a scene that may recall one from the 1995 movie “Money Train,” where Jennifer Lopez played an undercover cop who, while out to catch a firebug, was working as a decoy NYC subway token booth clerk.
The employee said she was playing the numbers when the suspect took out “a Nestle water bottle and poured an unknown substance onto the countertop.” When asked, the man “angrily said ‘Give me everything in the register,’ produced a lighter “and threatened to set the substance on fire.”
The suspect left with $968 in cash – whose status remains undisclosed.
MONTCLAIR – The co-owner of a Montclair Center hair salon and/or his attorney may be responding to hostile work environment, sexual assault and wrongful termination complaints lodged by a former employee in Superior Court-Paterson Feb. 16.
Stylist “Jane Doe,” said Morristown attorney Juan Fernandez, was filed against Bangz Salon and Wellness Spa co-owner Richard Cronk in Paterson because his client resides in Passaic County.
Fernandez and Doe are seeking damages from Cronk for alleged sexual battery, assault, infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy. Damages are also being sought from Bangz for alleged wrongful termination, failing to maintain a safe work environment and negligent hiring and supervision.
Doe, as plaintiff, accuses Cronk of forcing her to sexually contact him during an October visit to the office he shares with co-owner Dominick Sansvero. She came into the office looking for a ruler to help a staff member measure hair for a “Locks of Love” cancer donation. Sole office occupant Cronk, she said, unzipped his pants, forcibly shut the office door and forced her hand to “clamp” around his genitals.
The plaintiff, who said she “could not get out of bed for two days,” told Sanservo Oct. 22 of the incident. Sanservo’s “corrective action,” as per the complaint, was to twice say, “sorry, it happened,” twice and “to accept her decision to no longer work at Bangz since no action was taken.”
The plaintiff accused Cronk of creating a hostile environment of openly making remarks “of a sexual nature,” from strip club visit recollections to commenting on her breasts, on three occasions leading to the office incident.
ECPO spokeswoman Katherine Carter said that they have not had any criminal complaints or cases filed against Cronk or Bangz. The plaintiff said she did not file a criminal complaint for fear of retaliation from Cronk.
