Challengers Complete Clean Sweep in Englewood School Board Election

A slate of three challengers who ran on a platform of reforming school spending and personnel decisions and bringing order to public meetings pulled off a clean sweep of two incumbents and their chosen running mate in Tuesday's Englewood Board of Education election, according to unofficial election returns.

Devry Pazant (995 votes), Carol Feinstein (918 votes) and Junius "Jeff" Carter III (830 votes) each won three-year terms on the board, unseating nine-year incumbents Stephen Brown (793 votes) and Glenn Garrison (704 votes), and defeating their running mate Amy Ginsberg (742 votes).

Debra Zarate, who had pulled out of the race but remained on the ballot, received 235 votes.

The challengers, who received heavy Fourth Ward support, have criticized the board's outsourcing of secretaries and classroom assistants and its decision to pay the superintendent above the state-mandated cap while cutting or watering down academic programs.

“I think we’ve spent in wrong areas,” Carter, an employee of the Bergen County Special Services School District, said at last week's candidates debate. “We’re overpaying our superintendent and if we look at bringing some of those other costs in then we would have the funds to be able to put in the programs that are necessary.”

At least week's debate, Feinstein, a retired Englewood teacher and the former president of the Englewood Teachers Association, lamented what she called the "watering down" of the district's well-respected dual language program and spoke out about the length of board meetings, which she said often run late into the night and, as a result, freeze out the public.

Pazant, a TD Bank branch manager and Tuesday's leading vote getter, has stressed the need to open up a better line of communication between the board and district parents and stressed a desire that financial literacy classes be implemented in the district's curriculum.

The status quo slate of Brown, Garrison and Ginsberg, an associate dean at Long Island University in Brooklyn, stood by the board's record, touting the introduction of innovative classroom programs, improved SAT scores and the recent consolidation of administrators to save money.

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