PLUMSTED: City teacher appointed to school board

Leslie Septor chosen to fill vacancy

By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
PLUMSTED — A Trenton middle school teacher who previously served on the Lakehurst Board of Education before moving to Plumsted eight years ago is the newest member of the Board of Education.
Leslie Septor, a Sanders Lane resident and mother of five teenagers, was the unanimous choice of the Plumsted Board of Education, which interviewed four candidates for the open position during its Jan. 25 meeting. Ms. Septor replaces former school board member Herb Marinari, who stepped down from the Board of Education in December after his appointment to the Township Committee.
”Thank you for having the confidence in me,” Ms. Septor said after her nomination was approved. “I’m certain you won’t be disappointed because I do work hard, and I do everything I can to make the best decisions.”
Ms. Septor, who teaches middle school language arts in Trenton, has one child in college and four children in the Plumsted School District, including three at the high school and one at the middle school. In addition to her own teaching experience, Ms. Septor served five and a half years on the Lakehurst Board of Education where she chaired its finance and policy committees.
When asked during the candidate interviews to identify the Plumsted school district’s most pressing issues, Ms. Septor said she was concerned the elementary and middle schools had not achieved what the state Department of Education deems “adequate yearly progress” on its standardized test scores.
Ms. Septor also said there was a need to bring stability to a district that has had four different superintendents since Dr. Gerald Woehr retired in 2005. The current superintendent, Karen Jones, joined the district in July.
”That’s a large turnover so I wonder how we can work together to keep a superintendent and mold a superintendent because that much change creates chaos” and also damages morale among teachers and staff, Ms. Septor said.
The three other Plumsted residents interviewed were Timothy Hagar, an agriculture sciences teacher in the Northern Burlington Regional School District; Patrick Pecora, a substitute teacher and retired computer programmer; and Albert Pertroni III, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, who previously served on the Plumsted Board of Education from 1992-2007.
The Board of Education conducted the candidate interviews in public session, asking each of the four applicants for the unsalaried position to take turns answering four questions the board had e-mailed to them a day in advance. At the end of the interviews, the board recessed into a closed executive session to discuss its choices.
”It was not an easy decision; it was a good group of candidates,” Board of Education member Christopher Probasco said after the meeting reconvened.
”Thank you all for being willing to volunteer,” Mr. Probasco said.