In his letter to the editor, Judson Van Dervort, Jr. makes his case for residents to pay attention to the Moorestown Board of Education.
Last week, I wrote a letter to the editor to help create awareness about apparent back room politics on our school board and how I suspected that the majority of members would be prejudiced against one of their own colleagues because of his conservative views holding him back from a role for which he is obviously very well-qualified and which he has earned.
Completely as anticipated, last Thursday, the board did not elevate its current vice president, Brandon Pugh, to the role of president but instead voted in Sandra Alberti as president. Alberti was appointed to the board about a year ago. The public may not yet have many clues as to her priorities and agenda for the district, but we got one in an interview she gave after she was elected board president.
She was quoted in the newspapers as saying that she favors “the idea of moving beyond the minutiae of budgets and those kinds of things.” This should give pause to any of us who believe the school board’s role is to strike a balance among excellence in the quality of education, fairness to staff and concern for the already-stressed New Jersey and Moorestown taxpayer.
Because we now know that the opinion and agenda of the employee unions are of paramount importance to this board, if only based upon this leadership vote, I, for one, will need some convincing that this Board has as high a regard for the careful financial stewardship of this $70,000,000/year enterprise for the sake of those who fund it. I am feeling a bit underrepresented here. Apparently, we will need to stay more closely attuned to this board and to the “minutiae” of the upcoming budget season “and those kinds of things.”
Judson Van Dervort, Jr.
