By Birgitta Wolfe, Managing Editor
SPRINGFIELD Paul Tootell, president of the Northern Burlington Regional Board of Education, plans to attend and preside over Monday’s board meeting.
Ordinarily that would be unremarkable. But Mr. Tootell’s name was one of 186 people on a state Department of Education list of school board members who had not completed a new state-mandated criminal background check, including fingerprinting.
Before the deadline for that mandate was extended from Dec. 31 to Jan. 27, anyone not complying would be eliminated from his board seat. If criminal convictions or found, the member is barred from serving on the school board.
Mr. Tootell on said Jan. 16 that he filed his application but missed his appointment for fingerprinting due to his workload at the Congoleum Corp. where he is the human resources manager.
He has another appointment scheduled for Jan. 24, noting “I made a mistake. I know the rules of the road. . .I wasn’t protesting the process.”
”I talked to the superintendent and the business administrator today and they both said I could sit on the board” on Monday because of the extension,” said the Springfield representative on the regional school board..
Without the extension, he said, he would have been barred from taking a seat, although he could have been in the audience.
”I wouldn’t have attended to sit in the audience. That would have been embarrassing to me,” he said, but added he understood why precautions are taken.
”I have nothing to hide. I’m a pretty solid guy. I don’t mind, but it’s really silly. It makes you feel like a criminal,” Mr. Tootell said, who noted he was given federal secret clearance in the mid-1980s when he did defense-related work.
Mr. Tootell served on the Springfield Board of Education for nine years and is in his fourth year on the Northern Burlington Regional board.
Under the state law signed by Gov. Chris Christie in May, the state’s 4,500 school board members are fingerprinted and checked for first, second, third and fourth-degree crimes involving:
manufacture, transportation, sale, possession, distribution or habitual use of a controlled dangerous substance;
the use of force or the threat of force to or upon a person or property including, but not limited to, robbery, aggravated assault, stalking, kidnapping, arson, manslaughter and murder;
recklessly endangering another person, terroristic threats, criminal restraint, luring, enticing child into motor vehicle, causing or risking widespread injury or damage, criminal mischief, burglary, usury, threats and other improper influence, perjury and false swearing, resisting arrest, escape.
Extension of the Dec. 31 deadline came after Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Jerry Green and Assembly Education Chairman Patrick J. Diegnan Jr. on Friday asked the state’s acting education commissioner, Christopher Cerf, to extend the deadline for compliance.
”While we firmly stand behind this law and its intention, we are concerned about reports regarding the implementation of the law,” wrote Mr. Green (D-Union/Middlesex/Somerset) and Mr. Diegnan (D-Middlesex). “It appears that some board members who have not yet complied were unaware of the requirements and the deadlines for compliance. Additionally, some were unable to comply based on the backlogs for fingerprinting.”
”The purpose of the law is to protect our children from board of education members with a criminal history, not to remove dedicated members who did not comply in a timely manner,” they wrote.
