Berkeley Heights BOE Attorney, Business Administrator, and The Penna Bloc’s Display of Cognitive Dissonance During the 01/04/2023 Re-Org Meeting

Several emails were sent to the Business Administrator and Board of Education on how the Agenda violated Board Policies and By-Laws. Despite this prior notice and stated objections to policy violations the Agenda represented, the Business Administrator, Attorney, and the Penna bloc jumped through hoops to justify the removal of critical items – at one point they were referred to as “ceremonial” .

Items like curriculum and key appointments are now considered “ceremonial”.

Ms. Akiri exposed the hypocrisy by making a motion on the Board Attorney. Notice how Ms. Stanley, the BOE Attorney (whose job is on the line), and the Business Administrator, suddenly become sticklers for policies. The Business Administrator follows the “OMG I’ve not seen this in 26 years” line (a script the BOE Attorney used in a prior meeting when Dr. Forreger attempted to split a resolution).

Even funnier is that the motion did not violate the 48-hour rule as the vote was on an emergent issue – with no BOE President – the matter of the BOE Attorney for the next meeting needs to be decided by the Board as a whole. The Business Administrator incredibly decides this is not an “emergent issue,” which the BOE should have decided with a vote. Personally I question whether that whole charade was legal. What shouldn’t escape the public however is the sheer acrobatics this last argument represented for an Administration and a Bloc that screamed at the top of its’ lungs on how necessary it was to have an attorney present during meetings all last year. Now it’s just not emergent – so non-emergent that a non-elected representative can rob a vote on a key appointment that should have been on the agenda to begin with.

Who needs an attorney with the expertise Ms. Stanley demonstrated on Roberts Rules throughout the entire meeting?

Also of interest is Ms. Akiri pointing out that the law firm present was largely responsible for guiding the Board in what is now a largely defunct ethics case against Ms. Akiri that backfired and led to SEC-validated ethics complaints against Ms. Penna, Ms. Stanley, and Mr. Hyman. Given the apparent multiple conflicts of interest, how can this firm impartially speak to this issue?

This tactic of ganging up on a BOE Member and feigning outrage and shock over what is a typical and appropriate behavior (like making a motion) is not a new tactic for the Penna bloc. The idea, I believe, is to make it a circus so that the focus becomes the drama and attention moves away from the more substantive issue: an elected BOE Member was improperly robbed of her ability to have a motion voted on.

On a positive, we get insight into Ms. Khanna’s leadership at the end of the meeting as she got the Board to agree to compromise and walked Ms. Penna into a motion to table the motion.

At the end of the day this was a meeting where substantial items were removed from the agenda by the District Administration and the Penna-Bloc to create a theatre that did nothing to benefit our students. It was a set up intended to create chaos and build a perception that Angela Penna needs to be president “or nothing will get done.” So as funny and interesting as some of the moments to the meeting were – it was a sad and desperate display that did nothing to benefit our schools.

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