Middletown BOE Member Soporowski Initially Supported Closing Schools, Then Changed Mind

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — Middletown school board member Mark Soporowski was for closing schools — until he wasn't.

Board president Frank Capone forwarded an email Soporowski sent to Middletown school superintendent Jessica Alfone on Feb. 26. This was the day after Alfone privately presented to the school board, in executive session, her proposal to solve the district's $9.8-million budget hole: Close Leonardo and Navesink elementaries and move those students into Bayshore Middle School, which would become Bayshore Elementary.

"Jess,

I want to acknowledge the hard work you have put into the budget and the thoughtful approach you have taken to ensure the district’s long-term stability. While school consolidation is never an easy topic, it is a necessary step, and I support the direction you are taking," Soporowski wrote. "That said, I know this transition will be especially tough for many families, including some I am personally close with. It is going to be important that the community receives the support it needs to navigate these changes. As we move forward, I want to make sure Bayshore Elementary sets the standard for what our future elementary schools should look like. This needs to be done the right way — without cutting corners — so that we build a strong foundation for the district’s future. I appreciate your forward-thinking leadership, and I am hopeful that this process will ultimately put us in a better position to offer more to our students. I look forward to the next steps.

Best,

Mark"

But when Alfone presented her plan to the public, at the March 18 school board meeting, Soporowski voted against closing schools. On April 4, he wrote on this Facebook page "I am NOT for closing schools. I am NOT for selling land. Period."

What changed his mind?

"Regretfully, I was not privy to all of the information when I sent that email," Soporowski told Patch Wednesday, before tonight's big meeting where the school board will be asked to vote on a budget that keeps all schools open, but brings a controversial 10.1-percent school tax increase for Middletown homeowners.

"After further consideration, in addition to reviewing some of the bids for professional services related to this consolidation, I became very concerned about this plan. Given the fact that the meeting was 20 days after that email, I was given more than enough time to understand that this plan had major red flags ... Something about this plan did not feel right to me. At the end of the day, no matter what I sent in that email, I voted no."

Capone, who will be voting against the 10.1 percent tax increase tonight, accused Soporowski of playing politics to Middletown parents who don't want to see their child's school close.

Capone also provided emails that show on March 20 he invited Soporowski, Jacqueline Tobacco and Joan Minnuies to a meeting with Middletown Mayor Tony Perry and Twp. administrator Tony Mercantante. That meeting lasted for three hours, where the school board and the town talked about the district's financial problems and they all discussed solutions, said Capone.

"This 'backroom deal,' Mark, you were a part of this," said Capone Wednesday. "Mr. Soporowski’s assertions that he has always opposed school closures and his comments about a sanctioned shared service meeting being a 'secretive backroom deal' are both amusing and completely unfounded. Such claims are typical of a new board member trying to make a name for themselves."

(It was a separate meeting, a later Shared Services meeting, where Capone and Tobacco met with Perry and others and came up with a plan to sell land to solve the deficit, split the cost of armed Class-3 police officers and raise taxes 5.88 percent. A majority of the board rejected that plan at the April 8 school board meeting, saying it was conceived in secret.)

"This is a time when our Board is in need of leadership the most," Soporowski responded. "Not a time to be throwing other members under the bus."

Soporowski voted against the proposal to split with the town the cost of the armed Class-3 officers (the district will continue footing the entire bill), and instead continues to ask the Township pay the full cost of having armed officers in Middletown schools.

"There are three reasons why the Township does not pay for the Class 3s," said Mercantante. "The only reason we have the special Class-3s is because the school district asked the town for them, and said they would pay for it. The Class-3s replaced their security guards. Secondly, special Class-3 officers can't do anything else. If they are not used in the schools, they cannot patrol something in town or monitor an event. By law, they are only allowed to be in schools. If we were to pay for them, we should get a service out of them, when all they can do legally is stay in the schools. And probably the biggest reason — and this is where some of them just really don't have a clue (referring to Soporowski) — if we were to pay for it out of our budget, the taxpayers would still pay for it. So for Mark to say he stands with the taxpayers is just ridiculous. It just makes no sense. He's trying to look like he's coming up with some innovative idea, but he is not at all."

Also Wednesday, Mercantante echoed statements he made in his op-ed that the school board should not pass the 10.1 percent tax increase Wednesday night.

"The initial idea presented by the district to close schools was gutsy and it was the right thing," he said. "The Board members know it is the right thing to do. It is very unfair to make everyone else pay to keep two schools open. Those two schools house five percent of kids in the district. And yet everyone has to pay for that. Like Port Monmouth (which the district closed in 2020), the buildings are old, not fully occupied and too expensive to maintain."

"The bottom line is Middletown's population boom was in the 1960s and 1970s. That's when school population peaked. It's been steadily declining ever since. That's the nature of demographics. At what point does the number of kids in a school building get so low that it's not financially viable to keep it open?"

"Instead of teaching their kids they have to sometimes change, some parents threw a big hissy fit and the school board members are kowtowing to that," said Mercantante. "Seven of the nine of them turned tail when they started to get pushback from the public. When you hold elected office you can't always make decisions that make everyone happy. You have to occasionally deliver some bad news once in a while."

The Middletown school board will vote on the budget Wednesday night; the meeting will be held in the High School North auditorium. The meeting begins at 7 p.m., at which time the Board will go into private executive session to discuss lawsuits against the district and other matters. It then opens to the public at approximately 7:30. Watch a livestream of the meeting here: