Hudson Reporter
First elected Black BOE trustee unseats trustee accused of racism
Board of Education leadership re-elected ×
Board Secretary Gary Maita swears in (from left to right) Trustees Maria Valado, Pam Sclafene, David Watson, and Christopher Munoz.
The Bayonne Board of Education has voted to keep its current leadership. At the Jan. 5 meeting, Trustee Maria Valado was re-elected to President, and Christopher Munoz was re-elected to Vice President.
The board voted unanimously for both Valado and Munoz, 8-0. Trustee Ava Finnerty was absent for medical reasons and did not vote.
Two new trustees were sworn in at the meeting, David “Doc” Watson and Pam Sclafene. Valado, Munoz, and Watson won their seats in the 2020 election, running under the “Together We Can” slate endorsed by Mayor James Davis and the entire city council.
Hudson Reporter
Dealing with Snow this Winter ×
We have already had our first major snowstorm in December, so it is a good time to review Bayonne’s snow policies.
Property owners and others with responsibility for properties are obligated to shovel the snow. Create a path on the sidewalks, so that pedestrians can walk. Shoveled snow should be placed on lawns and other places where people are not walking or driving. Please do not throw snow into the street. If ice forms on the sidewalk, you are required to remove it. Use salt or ice melt. If ice removal is impractical, you must put sand on the ice, so that pedestrians are less likely to slip and fall.
Hudson Reporter
Too early or too late?
The Board of Education squabbles over resolution timing ×
Heated discussion flared between socially distant board members behind plexiglass.
The Bayonne Board of Education voted down a resolution at its Dec. 10 meeting authored by Trustee Ava Finnerty regarding proposed changes to policy dictating board meeting conduct. Throughout the year, she has been calling for an earlier deadline regarding when resolutions can be added to a meeting’s agenda.
Preventing last-minute resolutions
Finnerty wants a rule that resolutions or other items must be added to an agenda ten days before a board meeting. She called the proposed policy change “a matter of transparency” and said it was written consultation with the New Jersey School Board Association.
Hudson County View
Bayonne Board of Education Trustee Joseph Broderick, who served as board president four times between 2016 and 2019, resigned last week and will be replaced by Pam Sclafane.
“I want to thank him for all the great work that he did. He was the first elected president to the board and he worked with so much patience with all of us and treated everyone with so much respect. He will truly be missed here,” Board President Maria Valado said at Wednesday’s meeting.
“His knowledge, his giving of himself to the Bayonne district is all qualities that we applaud and that we admired in him and we are gonna miss him very much here.”