Berkeley Heights Board Of Education President Michael D’Aquila tells resident to come back next month to finish question

I had the opportunity to watch the most recent Berkeley Heights Board of Education meeting and was both shocked and offended with the way our Board President treated a resident that runs the local Chinese school in town. 

According to the resident, the local non-profit Chinese school is stretched thin on its budget for the many services it provides to our community.  The cost of renting space at our middle school comprises the “lion’s share” of their expenses.  The resident came equipped with rent comparables from neighboring towns and made it abundantly clear that the Berkeley Heights rent charge is, in the best light, at the upper end of the range of comparables.   The crux of the resident’s question was whether there was an opportunity to get some rent relief– perhaps align it closer to the cost of neighboring towns.  At no point did she say anything controversial; she was there to plead for help from the town she lives in so the school can continue to offer their services to our community.  As noted by the resident, such services include the teaching of the Chinese language for grades K-9, AP Chinese for high school, teachings of Chinese culture, English as a Second Language and many other subjects.  Unfortunately, for this woman and for our community, she has been unable to obtain any response from our Superintendent despite numerous attempts.   

With all due respect for meeting rules and the need for their existence in order to run a proper and orderly meeting, Mr. D’Aquila’s treatment of this resident was not only obnoxious and callous but it was also so outside the bounds of decency and contrary to the spirit of what the Board’s interests purport to be and should be. 

If you have not had an opportunity to watch the Board meeting, I implore you to view the meeting on YouTube (the exchange begins at time mark 2:09:45 of the October 20, 2022 BOE meeting).  With the caveat that I cannot adequately describe the extent of Mr. D’Aquila’s behavior in this article, I will attempt to summarize it, as follows: 

Anybody who has followed our BOE Meetings for any period of time has experienced regular overruns of the three-minute time limit for the resident speaking time.  Such overruns of the time limit are so commonplace that one would have trouble searching through our BOE archives and find a meeting that did not have resident overruns.  In fact earlier in the same meeting another resident was allowed over 6 minutes.  One solution that we’ve seen employed at our meetings is asking the speaker to allow all of the other residents to speak and then come back at the end of the public comment portion so that everybody else is heard and the speaker is also adequately addressed.  

In this instance, while this resident was speaking Mr. D’Aquila’s obnoxious Snoopy timer, which we’ve now learned is part of our meeting cadence, began chiming.  When this woman asked if she could finish her question, Mr. D’Aquila told her that her time was up and that her solution was to come back to the meeting NEXT MONTH  to finish her question.   Again, I can’t aptly explain the degree of rudeness that was served with this response and suggest you watch it for yourself.  One BOE member even suggested the alternative, mentioned above, that speaker be given the opportunity to finish after other residents spoke, but was also steamrolled by Mr. D’Aquila’s retort that “this is not a discussion.” 

While reflecting on this video, I wonder if Michael D’Aquila would have acted in a similar fashion towards someone more familiar with the “rules” of the Board of Education, for some other organization that uses school space, or for a resident speaking in favor of paying our Board attorney to drum-up and draft ethics charges against one of our BOE members?  Is this what the Board means by making everybody feel respected and included? 

Shame on Board President Michael D’Aquila.   

-Edmund Tom Maciejewski