GR BOE, Superintendent at Odds Over Ethics Compliance Report [Update]

There's bad blood between the  and its superintendent over a state report on ethics compliance standards due Monday at midnight.

Superintendent David Verducci alleges the school board has been meddling with decisions and overstepping their bounds, a claim the board says is wholly untrue.

Verducci declined to cite where he felt the board has overstepped its bounds, but compared the sharing of powers to the federal government. He described the arrangement as the superintendent acting as the executive branch, the administration as the legislative and the board as the judiciary.

"Their job is to pass on the reasonableness and propriety of what we do," Verducci told Patch Monday afternoon. "The board and I sometimes have a different perspective on what each of our roles happens to be."

At issue is the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum Statement of Assurance (QSAC-SOA), a self-evaluation document filled out by the superintendent on district and board compliance of state standards. The board must review the document before sending it off to the county superintendent and the state Department of Education. It's due Monday night, just hours after the board convenes for its regularly scheduled public meeting.

Verducci, on the fifth question of the QSAC-SOA evaluation regarding governance (attached), alleged the board had only "partially" satisfied its code of ethics requirements.

"While this item, as narrowly and only partially stated, has been satisfied in part, the chief school administrator (superintendent) avers that specific terms and conditions of the Board Code of Ethics are not being met in toto," Board President Rona McNabola read, citing Verducci's written comment at a special public meeting on Jan. 5, according to The Glen Rock Gazzette. Her reading continued: "...Due to the Glen Rock Board of Education's ongoing practice of operating beyond the boundaries of policy-making, planning and appraisal, as defined under the Code of Ethics for school board members."

He said he didn't want to "come off as negative or angry" with his stance but told The Gazzette unless an understanding is reached with the board, the file will be sent unchanged.

"Basically what the board thinks is he maybe misinterpreted the question," Trustee Randi Blumberg told Patch Monday. "The question was where we in compliance with something and the answer is very cut and dried – it's never been an issue with the state board of education and that's the only way we could not be in compliance."

She continued: "No matter what his feelings are, the answer is yes, we are in compliance. If he has opinions that he'd like to see things differently, obviously that's something that needs to be talked about . . . but we are in compliance and that's the bottom line."

Verducci said he wants to emphasize that he's not accusing the board of any kind of financial impropriety or integrity issue – it's just a disagreement about the roles of the board and superintendent, he maintained.

There were "problems: in the district that "some people were fixing because nobody else was" and they got used to doing it, Verducci said. "My job is to show them a better way."

Blumberg said "the real issue" is Verducci wasn't available for a special public meeting held on Thursday, in which Verducci was on vacation though there appears to have been a communications snafu.

McNabola also could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon. The Bergen County Superintendent of Education was not in the office Monday.

The board will be meeting at 7 p.m. for a closed session discussion on the issue and later at 8 p.m. for the public session.

[Editor's note: This report was last updated at 6:07 p.m. Monday.]