Troubles on the Jersey City Board of Education

The Jersey City Board of Education apparently still has not resolved the vote to reappoint Vidya Gangadin as president and John Reichart as vice president during its reorganization meeting last month, one of several legal and procedural controversies yet to be settled.

First, in what appears to have been a ploy to maintain control of the board in order to assure the reappointment of Dr. Marcia Lyles as superintendent, the board leadership may have violated Robert’s Rules of Order by counting abstentions as votes against Joel Torres, who was nominated first and would have been elected president by a 4 to 3 majority.

Communications between the board and state educational officials and other state education groups have yet to resolve whether the school board made a mistake in counting the abstentions as negative votes. A legal ruling could force the board to redo its reorganization vote. Even then, the pro-Lyle votes hold a 5 to 4 majority, so the result may not change the outcome, leaving Gangadin and Reichart as the presiding officers.

Next, there is a legal question about whether the board renewed Lyles’ contract properly. The board’s attorney ruled in December that Lyles’ contract would be automatically renewed if the board didn’t vote to decline to renew it. In December, the board was poised to approve the contract.