Keen should not be on board’s Personnel Committee

By: John Tredrea
Hopewell Valley Regional Board of Education members Roy Dollard and Lisa Wolff were as right as one can be when they said, at a recent school board meeting, that their colleague on the board, Stephen Keen, should not be on the board’s Personnel Committee.
Mr. Keen should step down from that committee, or be moved to another committee assignment by board President Jim Wulf, who appointed Mr. Keen to the Personnel Committee in the spring.
Mr. Keen is a teacher, in another district, and as such is a member of the teachers union. Therefore, he should not be on the board’s Personnel Committee – a very key player in school board negotiations with the teacher’s union, the Hopewell Valley Education Association, in this district.
Mr. Keen’s presence on the Personnel Committee inevitably creates perception of a possible conflict of interest. No union-card-carrying teacher should be on that committee now. The Valley’s teachers union contract was an intensely debated issue this year, which was marked by repeated pleas – including one from this writer – that teachers here accept a wage freeze, which they did not.
Mr. Wulf’s appointment of Mr. Keen to the Personnel Committee was a mistake. He compounded that mistake by, incredibly, making Mr. Keen chairman of that committee when Mr. Dollard resigned from the chairmanship in protest over Mr. Keen’s presence on the committee.
None of this is to accuse Messrs. Wulf or Keen of any impropriety or bad faith. It’s not personal. It’s business. That means you don’t have a union member negotiating with his own union.
John Tredrea is staff writer for the Hopewell Valley News.