In a caucus meeting on Jan. 24 and, then, in an action meeting on Jan. 28, the Edison Board of Education is certain to ratify its appointment of an acting superintendent and offer him a long-term contract. It will be interesting to see which members of the school board vote on this appointment and which ones abstain. Two of the nine members abstained when the board voted in November to put Carol Toth on administrative leave as superintendent. Her “vacation” of two and a half years will cost Edison’s taxpayers almost a half-million dollars in salary and benefits.
A problem with the school board when it comes to removing and appointing superintendents, according to a petition requesting the state commissioner of education to intervene in Edison, is that some board members have conflicts of interest. Employees of the school system include the son of one board member, the wife of another, and the wife and two sons of a third.
The question is not simply whether such individuals should vote on the superintendent or acting superintendent, but why in the world they are on the board in the first place. What were the residents of Edison thinking when they selected as board members people whose immediate relatives work for the school system?
This is not the end of the story. The board will soon begin negotiating a new contract with the teachers. Some members of the board will apparently have to abstain from participating in the negotiations or even voting on the contract that emerges from the talks. And, to top it off, the person about to be approved as acting superintendent has a wife and daughter working for the school system, according to the petition sent to the state commissioner. What role, if any, can he properly play in these negotiations?
And so it goes in Edison.
Gene I. Maeroff
Edison.