Regional School Brass 'Asking Forgiveness, Not Permission,' Resident Says

Dear Editor: 

You correctly reported that Mendham Township’s representative to the West Morris Regional High School District (“WMRHSD”) Board of Education and the WMRHSD superintendent had a disagreement at the November 11th board meeting regarding the administration’s decision to prepare and mail a “newsletter” to residents served by the WMRHSD.  The disagreement was not about whether the district should communicate with the public about issues such as student performance, but rather about the timing and manner in which such communication took place.

As the soon-to-be-representative of Mendham Borough on the WMRHSD board, I feel it is important to weigh in.  First, a few facts:

1.     This “newsletter” is the first communication of this nature issued by the WMRHSD.  It is clearly labeled “Volume 1, Issue 1”. 

2.     According to the superintendent, the information presented in the newsletter was no longer “news” at the time of publication, because the same information had been presented on two previous occasions by the superintendent in public meetings about 2-3 months before the date of this newsletter. 

3.     The newsletter was published and distributed without the involvement of the Communications Committee of the board, and without any discussion or approval by the board as a whole.  (Perhaps selected board members were aware of it, but that is not clear at this time.)

4.     WMRHSD Business Administrator Doug Pechanec reported that the cost of producing and mailing the newsletter was $5,800, an amount he indicated was taken from the budget line item, “Program of Studies and Strategic Development.”

5.     The newsletter was delivered one week before an election involving several of the nine board seats, two of which were contested, and one of which (mine) was against an incumbent, and in which a major campaign issue was education quality and academic achievement at Mendham HS.

Now, a few observations:

1.     The administration reports to the superintendent, the superintendent reports to the board and the board answers to the electorate (the communities of taxpayers and students served by the district). Several committees, including the Communications Committee, serve the board. I believed that it would have been preferable for the superintendent to at least discuss with the Communications Committee of the board his intent to initiate a new communications program.  I also think that providing the board with a preview of the information to be communicated in such a significant publication is warranted.  Thus, while the superintendent should not need to get board approval for every communication, I believe that he should secure board approval for the initiation of new communication programs and for the content of major communications to the public.

2.     This was a major communication – it was distributed not just to parents of WMRHSD students, but to all residents of each municipality served by the WMRHSD.  It cost $5,800, an amount not specifically appropriated in the budget for such a purpose.  I am not aware of any precedent in our district for spending such an amount of money on any specific communication to the public.  To put this level of spending in perspective, it is slightly more than twice as much as I spent on my entire two-month long election campaign, which utilized many forms of online and offline media and mail. The “newsletter” also appears to have been prepared and distributed in haste.  Chester Township representative Jim Johnson complained that the administration failed to include many residents served by the WMRHSD because their mailing addresses fall within other towns’ postal zones.  I trust this was just an oversight by the administration, rather than intentional.  Nonetheless, a major, inaugural communication such as this should be properly planned, with board involvement, so that such oversights can be avoided.  The money for this communication came from a budget line item titled "Program of Studies and Strategic Development,” which appears to be a curriculum-related, rather than communications-related, budget allocation.  Publication on the district’s web site would have been a far cheaper means of communicating.  So one has to wonder why such an expensive means of communication was selected and how our students’ education benefited from the expenditure.

3.     The timing of this communication came only days before an election of new members to the WMRHSD board, to which the superintendent reports, and only weeks after a heated board meeting in which the superintendent received a major contract extension through a process that appeared to be designed to deny transparency to the public.  So, why was $5,800 diverted from what appears to be a curriculum-related budget allocation to finance the distribution of a glossy district-wide communication publication (of facts that had already been publicly presented on at least two previous occasions) only days before a hotly contested board representative election and only weeks after the superintendent received a contentious contract extension?  Given the presentation of facts only that reflected well on the existing administration, the rush to get this newsletter out, the great expense the administration was willing to incur in order to do so, and the lack of any advance discussion with the board, any reasonable person must wonder if this decision was driven by an intention to support both the incumbent in a contested board seat election and the superintendent in the wake of his controversial contract extension..  (Notably, the superintendent, given the opportunity at the October board meeting, chose not to object to the lack of transparency with which his contract extension was approved.  I have since learned that it was he that proposed the contract extension to the Negotiations Committee of the board in the first place.).  In short, I do not believe that the taxpayers who finance this school district want our superintendent using district funds (taxpayer dollars) to influence elections or support his own personal interests.

The superintendent stated that the facts contained in the newsletter were accurate.  Neither the board nor I have yet had the opportunity to check all of these facts, but let’s assume they are all accurate.  I remain concerned that the data selected by the superintendent for presentation -- all of which was positive in nature– may have presented a biased view of the district’s student achievement.  As a board member, I intend to research recent academic achievement trends carefully and objectively. 

In summary:

• I agree with the superintendent that we want the district to communicate with the public, including about matters regarding student achievement.  I also agree that it is fine to share information about student achievement that happens to be positive, but not because it’s positive. It should be presented because it is representative of the whole set of relevant facts that help the public form an informed opinion.
• I agree with Mr. Button that we want the administration to present as unbiased a view of the state of the district and student achievement as possible, and we want the administration to do so in a manner which is both cost effective and which minimizes the risk of impacting elections of district board members.  The use of taxpayer funds in support of any type of political campaign is widely considered to be a breech of fiduciary duty.
• I agree with Ms. Asdal that the administration should seek board approval of either the initiation of new communication initiatives or the content of major district communications to the public.
• I agree with Mr. Johnson that future communications need to be better planned and executed, so that all district residents are treated similarly if, in fact, the communication is appropriate for all district residents. 

Regarding the broader context, in which this discussion occurred, let me also share some observations.

I know that the superintendent made comments at the meeting that suggested that these questions and concerns being raised were somehow personal in nature.  He was emotional in his response, suggesting that he took this line of questions and comments as a personal affront.  He seemed to raise the concern that the presentation of positive facts about the district tends to increase the level of scrutiny to which he and his administration is subjected.  I would contend that these questions being asked of the superintendent would be asked of any superintendent by any board properly performing its role.  The array of facts here, not the person, is what warranted the questions asked and the concerns raised.  This is not about a person, Mackey Pendergrast, but rather about how a superintendent conducts himself vis-a-vis both the board and the public.  It’s not personal.  These issues and concerns arose only because of the behavior of the administration, not because the Superintendent happens to be named Mackey Pendergrast. 

My observation at board meetings over the past year is that the administration has pursued a policy, whether intentional or not, of “asking for forgiveness, rather than for permission.”  A few examples support this observation:

• In April’s board meeting, the board was asked to approve an entire curriculum, almost none of which had yet been presented to the board (in fact, I understood from discussion at the meeting that most of it had not yet even been drafted).  The board was told in advance that only the science portion of the curriculum (which, I believe, had been drafted by that point) was to be approved at the meeting, but the board was actually asked to approve the entire curriculum instead.  (In the recent October board meeting, the superintendent appeared to publicly deny this set of facts, but the agenda and minutes of the April board meeting, available on the WMRHSD website, confirm that this is exactly what happened, as do numerous eyewitness accounts from board members and members of the public who attended that meeting.)  I had understood at that April meeting that the reason the administration was making such an unusual request of the board was because the district was already facing some sort of penalties for missing a NJ Department of Education deadline (the previous September, I was told) by which “board approval of the curriculum” for the upcoming school year was required.   Thus, the board was placed in a position by the administration where it had to choose, as I understand it, between allowing penalties to be imposed on the district or approving a curriculum that it had not had the opportunity to review.
• In the October meeting, the board was asked to approve a contract extension for the superintendent where inadequate notice to the public (or even to some board members) was provided.  In fact, some board members were even denied copies of the contract to be approved until only two hours before the meeting.  (In this case, some members of the board share the blame with the administration, in my opinion, because they led the public to believe that the negotiations committee of the board had initiated this contract extension, rather than the superintendent, and they did not agree to postpone the vote until the next meeting in order to provide the public an opportunity to provide input.)
• In this most recent situation, an inaugural district-wide newsletter was published and distributed without any specific budgetary authority, board notification or approval, or even Communications Committee notification or review.  

I believe that the administration, at a bare minimum, needs to start providing the board, and the public, with adequate notice of actions for which it intends to seek approval, and it needs to plan for such actions in a more effective manner.  Last minute approval requests cannot be the modus operandi for any organization, including our school district, especially on such major issues as curriculum approval, superintendent contract approval and new district-wide communication initiatives.  The administration must also recognize that it derives its authority only from the board.  The election of board members is currently the only vehicle through which voters influence the Superintendent and, thus, the administration and school district.  The administration needs to permit the board to exercise the authority conferred upon it by the voters and it needs to avoid even the appearance of trying to influence the election of board members, if for no other reason than because it is to those board members that it reports.

Much has been said over the past year or so about the “poor state of relations” among existing board members and between board members and the administration.  I believe that addressing these issues will serve to improve the collegiality of these relations because it will instill a greater degree of trust among all parties that a fair and representative process for making decisions can be firmly relied upon.  I look forward to working closely with other board members and the superintendent to address these issues in order to improve the manner in which the board, administration and school district functions.

Brian Cavanaugh
Mendham Borough