by Walter Elliott
There is a reason why a village resident here on the South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education may have refrained from voting on, or even discussing, a particular matter since May 10.
NEWARK – The Newark Public Schools Board of Education’s reorganization meeting was a session of at least two firsts here May 4.
The full nine-member board that Tuesday night promoted Dawn Haynes from vice president to president before a live Zoom audience. She succeeded Josephine Garcia in leading the state’s largest public school system in policies.
Haynes, who was sworn into her second term minutes before, became the first hijab-wearing board member to become president. A majority of participating registered city voters chose the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” runner April 20 and in 2018.
Prior to running on the fusion or unity ticket, Haynes was a Newark Anti-Violence Coalition member. The Malcolm X Shabazz High School Class of 2001 graduate was promoted from the William H. Brown Academy of the Arts. (An earlier BOE had split the magnet elementary school between the nearby Belmont-Runyon Elementary and Arts High schools around 2012 after the 1920s-era Bergen Street School building had fallen into disrepair.)
The current board, who will preside until May 2022, then selected first-term member Flohisha Johnson and the just-re-elected Vereliz Santana as First and Second vice-presidents. It is the first time the board has two “veeps.”
The first swearing-in dual vice-presidents had startled some virtual audience members who felt there should have been prior public discussion. Haynes said that adding a vice president was made on recommendation by New Jersey Department of Education officials.
Haynes, Velez, Asia Norton and Daniel Gonzalez – who were all elected on April 20 – were sworn into their previous or new board seats at the meeting’s start. Gonzalez was elected to complete the late Octavio “Tave” Padilla’s term.
IRVINGTON – The township’s Irvington Public Schools board of education applied Holiday Inn’s “No Surprises” motto and philosophy from the mid-1970s to naming their leadership for the next 12 months here April 28.
The just-reconstituted board named Richard Williams and Audrey M. Lyon as their respective president and vice president. Longtime member Williams and second-term member Lyon were similarly named for IPS’ 2020-21 school year.
Board members Annette L. Beasley, Ronald J. Brown and Gloria Chison were re-inaugurated at the start of that Wednesday night meeting. A majority of participating township voters re-elected the unchallenged trio April 20.
EAST ORANGE – A collision between a car and a pedestrian along Central Avenue’s former Evergreen Arcade business district May 6 came days after a joint safety study body had labeled this city as “the eighth unsafest” in the U.S.
An EOPD report had police officers, Pulse EMS and firefighters to Central Avenue just east of its Halsted Street intersection at 8:15 that Friday morning.
The first responders found a man lying in the westbound curb lane and the driver of a late model four-door purple coupe stopped in the left lane. The car featured a starburst windshield.
While Pulse took the stricken man to a local hospital, witnesses told authorities that he had “bounced off the windshield.” The man was admitted in serious condition. Rush hour traffic, including buses on NJTransit’s Nos. 94 and 97 and CoachUSA’s 24 A and B routes, were detoured.
Insurify, on May 1, published a study where 27.4 drivers per 10,000 in East Orange had failed to yield right of way to pedestrians, resulting in a violation, in the past year. The finding placed the city eighth – just below seventh-ranked Paterson’s 28.1 per 10,000 rate.
The study, which sought to find the 20 worst pedestrian safety records among U.S. cities, was based on four million insurance applications analyzed by the National Safety Council and the Governors Highway Safety Association. New York City’s Staten Island borough was ranked the worst at 53.6 per 10,000.
East Orange City Council members have had streetscape improvements made and have asked NJDOT to install curb cuts along Freeway Drive East and West flanking I-280 in recent years.
ORANGE – The City Council here has kept its Cannabis Based Business ban ordinance on the table for a third straight meeting May 18. It may be lifted from the table as early as its June 1 meeting – or let it die on the table.
The ordinance, 14-2021, calls for practically banning all six classes of CBB allowed by the state within city limits. The sole exception is the bill’s allowance of deliveries from outside Orange within city limits.
Orange is among the state’s 565 municipalities having to tell the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission if it wants CBBs on their premises or not for the next five years on or by Aug. 20. Gov. Phil Murphy started the 180-day countdown when he signed the N.J. Cannabis Regulatory, Enforcement and Marketplace Modernization Act into law Feb. 22.
“Local Talk” has been unable to find any clause in 14-2021 which would grandfather any CBBs within Orange. There is one retailer and a reported warehouse that has set up shop here since last year.
WEST ORANGE – Some of the township’s elders and administrators are considering adding a resident or a residents committee onto the West Orange Planning Board in the wake for greater calls for transparency at the council’s May 20 meeting.
Council President Cindy Matute-Brown said in that Thursday night virtual meeting that she would consider calling for the hiring of “a public planner.”
Several residents logged on to air their planning concerns and specific proposal developments before Matute-Brown and her colleagues. Many came to voice their opposition to a proposed renovation and addition to a house at 410 Main St. that is up for WOPB consideration.
The site plan applicant is asking the board for permission to convert the 1878 single family house into “a five-story mixed-use building with 31 rental apartments and 1,100 square feet of retail space.”
Neighbors who object to adding more residential units in town have started a “410MainStreetWO” Facebook page and a petition drive.
SOUTH ORANGE – There is a reason why a village resident here on the South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education may have refrained from voting on, or even discussing, a particular matter since May 10.
The N.J. Department of Education Ethics Commission advised the SOMSD May 10 that Elissa Maplespina be “prohibited from participating in any and all matters related to” the disposition of a 2020 lawsuit settlement between the district and the SOMA Black Parents Workshop.
SOMSD BOE President Thair Joshua stated that the NJDOE Ethics Commission gave its advisory at the board’s request for guidance. Neither Joshua nor the school board are making accusations against the first-term Malespina.
Malespina, before she was elected to the board, joined SOMA BPW on behalf of her son. The SOMSD-BPW settlement over racial equity and access included the district’s paying financial settlements to BPW plaintiffs.
Maplespina and her son received $30,000 – $25,000 of which she donated to the MAPSO Freedom School. (The balance went for her son’s educational expenses.)
Joshua, May 12, stressed that neither he or the board have made actuations of impropriety against Malespina, nor are saying that she did anything unethical regarding the suit and disposition for her settlement payments.
MAPLEWOOD – It is not known whether the late long-time Committeeman and Municipal Judge Ed Borrone’s headstone in Jersey City’s Holy Name Cemetery will have “Hon.” carved ahead of his name or “Esq.” after it.
The Hon. Borrone, 81, who died May 16 in Neptune’s Jersey Shore University Medical Center, was a Township Committeeman 1977-88 and was a Municipal Court Judge 1989-98.
Borrone, Esq. was also an attorney and special counselor to Public Service Coordinated Transport here at 180 Boyden Ave.1965-80. He continued representing PSE&G from Newark after PSCT became the state-owned NJTransit Bus and Light Rail Operations in 1980.
Borrone’s transit experience prompted Gov. Tom Kean (R-Livingston) to appoint him as NJTransit Board of Directors’ Vice Chairman. He was a chairman of the Hospital Center of Orange’s Board of Trustees in its last years 1976-95.
Ed and first wife Elizabeth meanwhile raised son Edward and daughter Kathleen here. Second wife Lillian and two grandchildren are also among his survivors.
Edward Jerrome Borrone was born in Weehawken July 23, 1939 to Ed., Sr. who was a Hoboken Councilman and the Hudson County Clerk in the 1950s. The St. Peter’s Prep graduate parlayed his baseball scholarship for the St. Peter’s College Peacocks and recruitment by MLB’s Minnesota Twins. The Twins’ failure to offer a bonus prompted Borrone to successfully obtain a juris doctorate from Newark’s Seton Hall Law School.
Borrone’s Funeral Mass was held May 22 at St. Teresa of Calcutta Parish’s Church of the Ascension, in Bradley Beach. St. Peter’s Prep has started a memorial scholarship in his name.
BLOOMFIELD – If the walls of 209 Franklin St., better known as Essex County Bloomfield Tech High School, could talk, would they be asking itself whether it is having an identity crisis? Or maybe they will be expressing relief that they are being used at all?
The 1930 vocational and technical high school is being used as a temporary site for another county district student body for the third time in four years.
Although the 2,000-student capacity building ceased being Bloomfield Tech June 30, 2018, it had been used to house students of Essex County School of Technology-West Caldwell when the latter’s building was being renovated and expanded in 2019-21. The West Caldwell sign remains above Bloomfield Tech’s front door May 24.
Bloomfield Tech has been housing three of Newark Tech’s four grades here since May 17 and will continue to do so through 2021-22. An announcement on Newark Tech School of Technology’s digital sign board at 91 W. Market St. says as much.
Although Newark Tech is the county district’s youngest building, it will be undergoing renovations during the next school year. All Newark Tech sophomores, juniors and seniors are to report or log into their new address in Bloomfield.
Newark tech’s freshman class, however, will be attending the district’s newest campus – the Donald M. Payne, Sr. School of Technology at Newark’s 498-544 W. Market St – which brings this story to a full circle. “Payne Tech,” which opened Sept. 1, 2018, was the merger of Bloomfield Tech and Newark’s 13th Street Tech high schools.
The Bloomfield Tech building is being used as a “swing space,” where the student body continues its instruction while its home building is being renovated, expanded or replaced. The Newark Public Schools. for example, intended to use its World War One-era Central High School building before selling it to NJIT.
MONTCLAIR – Parents of Montclair Public School elementary students are to look for a survey about holding full-time in-person classroom instruction in their mail June 1 – and to return their responses to MPS administrators soon.
Schools Superintendent Dr. Jonathan Ponds, in his May 21 open letter, said that his staff are working on such a survey. While he nor his administration have not made a gp/no-go full-time elementary in-person decision as of press time, this 2020-21 school year will end June 30.
“We’ll evaluate variables such as; proper spacing, furniture and restructuring physical spaces,” said Ponds in his Friday open letter. “We’re also contemplating implementing a five-day option for Tier II and III students and those with 504s. Please know that once variables are considered. we’ll implement five days based of efficiency, safety and equity in all schools.”
The letter comes while MPS is opening more of its classrooms to all students. Montclair High School has reopened to Sophomores May 26, who are to be joined by juniors and seniors June 1.
GLEN RIDGE – While other “Local Talk” towns weigh the merits of having Cannabis Based Businesses in their municipalities between now and Aug. 20, borough elders have taken their stand for the next five years.
Mayor Patrick Stuart signed into law May 1 an ordinance passed by borough council members April 12 that bans all CBBs now through April 2026. The ordinance does allow such businesses from outside Glen Ridge borders to make deliveries within borough limits.
Councilwoman Ann Marie Morrow cited both Glen Ridge’s limited commercial district and borough leaders’ wait-and-see attitude with the state regulations for their decision.
“This gives us the option to think about it,” said Morrow. “We’re a fully built-out, residential town (with) a very small retail section. We don’t have a lot of room, so we want to be thoughtful about it.”
Glen Ridge joins 15 other statewide municipalities in closing, but not bolting, their doors to CBBs. Orange and Nutley are contemplating similar bans; other “Local Talk” towns are discussing the matter.
BELLEVILLE – Township detectives have been looking for two cars and three suspects – two of them armed – in a carjacking on a major street here since May 13.
The owner-driver of an Audi A4 told responding Belleville police officers that he was along the 35 block of Washington Avenue when a “blue BMW X7” pulled up alongside him at about 8 p.m. that Thursday.
The victim then said that two suspects armed with guns got out and took control of the Audi. The Audi and the BMW then sped away, leaving the first driver physically unharmed.
Further descriptions of the three suspects, either car or which direction they had fled were not released as of press time.
