State Education Department orders resignations of nearly two dozen ed board members in East Newark, West New York, Jersey City and Guttenberg, saying they didn't cooperate with background checks
Published: Friday, January 13, 2012, 3:03 AM
By Terrence T. McDonald/The Jersey Journal

Nearly two dozen school board members in Hudson County must vacate their positions immediately after failing to submit to criminal background checks mandated by a new state law, state officials announced yesterday.

Among the board members ordered to resign are Eliu Rivera, chairman of the Hudson County Freeholders, and Adrienne Sires, president of the West New York Board of Education and wife of U.S. Sen. Albio Sires. Both say they have no intention of stepping down.

In addition, four members of the seven-member East Newark Board of Education have been ordered to resign. In total, 21 board members in Hudson County, mostly from charter school boards, have been told to vacate their seats.

A local school official who asked not to be named said the state contacted school officials three times since September notifying them of the mandatory background checks. Still, the official said, the state has no right to remove a sitting board member without calling a hearing first.

?Even if this is Hudson County, we should still have the right of due process,? the official said.

Rivera sits on the board of the Liberty Academy Charter School, and is the school?s founder. Four of the school?s board members have been ordered to resign.

Contacted by The Jersey Journal, Rivera, who was hospitalized last year after unintentionally inhaling an unknown substance, said he has no intention of stepping down as the board?s vice chairman.

?I told them I don?t know how many times: I was hospitalized,? he said. ?How can I (submit to a background check) when I was in intensive care for the last three months??

Rivera said he has made an appointment to submit to a background check.

Sires, who was appointed to the West New York school board in September and immediately named its president, told The Jersey Journal she doesn?t know why the DOE has ordered her to resign.

?I did do the criminal history. It just hasn?t come through yet,? said Sires, who said she is not stepping down.

But Department of Education spokeswoman Allison Kobus was adamant in an e-mail that the 186 school board members statewide named yesterday by the DOE must vacate their seats immediately.

?There are people who went through the process incorrectly, but this was told to me as the list of people who didn?t do it,? she said.

West New York school official Allan Roth said Sires submitted to the proper check, and called the whole issue a ?non-story.?

In East Newark, which has one school, board members Loren Britez, Johanna Lopez, Fernanda Fernandes and Donna O?Donnell are all being told to step down.

Roth, an attorney who represents the East Newark board, said the four board members submitted to the proper checks within the past two weeks, and ?will not be removed.?

The only other regular public school board member in Hudson County ordered to step down is Elaine Silverstone of Guttenberg. She could not be reached to comment.