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“This is ridiculous—enough of this nonsense!” exclaimed town committee member Gerard Shamey, out of sorts and out of order in what has become the standard operating procedure for communication with the Readington school board under new president Mark Berry. Mr. Shamey walked out of the June 7 meeting as the audience applauded his sentiments and his action. Earlier in this school board meeting, which was initially heavily attended by parents, children, teachers and others who had come to support teacher and student award winners and staff retirees, Mr. Shamey accepted an award for his daughter. Now he was walking out in disgust. Transformation from the sublime to the ridiculous only takes about an hour under the fast-track rules adopted by our distinguished school board members.

For the poor reader who has not followed the story so far, it would be wise to read up on the history of the budget defeat and the courtesy busing issue. The June 7 board meeting, like the last Town Committee meeting, was an education in political wrangling with a concentration in finger pointing. The Cliff Notes version goes like this. The school budget was roundly defeated; the town committee was forced by voters to make significant cuts in the school budget. For reasons only the participants know, negotiations between representatives of both parties became emotional and unproductive. When the school board was handed a mandate to cut $720K from their budget, a plan was hatched to try to shove the hot potato back into the lap of the town committee. By cutting courtesy busing, an issue sure to rile the emotions of parents, the school board apparently hoped to force the town committee to reconsider their directive. Since the town is legally responsible to provide “safe passage” for children, the school board calculated that they could force the town committee to erase $170K worth of their problem by choosing to cut courtesy busing over other areas. The town would be forced to back down, went the theory, because parents would not stand for such a drastic measure.

The school board members enamored with this idea were correct on one point: parents would not stand for such a drastic measure. As in previous meetings, a cue of parents and residents foaming at the mouth formed behind the podium at the June 7 school board meeting during the public speaking time. Once again, the agenda of the meeting was thrown out in order to accommodate overflowing emotions. Once again people in the audience shouted questions and comments out of order to certain board members who sat silent with practiced holier-than-thou expressions. The trouble is, the parents and residents were not buying into the idea that the courtesy busing cut is the fault of the town committee. While certain school board members fashioned their own crown of thorns and planned the route they would carry their invented crosses, members of the audience were pointing out the hypocrisy of a school board blaming the town committee for problems created by their own actions.

Gerard Shamey summed it all up minutes before he walked out. Courtesy busing cannot be eliminated, he said, and he rejected comments by board president Mark Berry that the town committee must act soon because time is of the essence. Mr. Shamey noted that the school board simply can’t let the cut go through and that they still have the ability through line item transfers to pay for the busing. “You created the problem and you must fix it.”

Board members like Mark Berry, Rich Kilpatrick, Susan Marcella, plus Superintendent Irene Benfatti had difficulty looking into the mirror being held up by parents and residents. Mark Berry objected to one criticism that the board is not listening. He was offended, he said. Launching into a wandering, red-faced tirade, Mark huffed that a district cannot be run on a popular vote and he puffed that decisions must be made based on the kids. Test scores are higher than ever, he exclaimed! It’s difficult not to put the blame on the town he nearly shouted as he reached a crescendo, and then he dragged out the other favorite bogeyman: “we are obligated by S-1701 and we have restrictions!” The reference to S-1701 is generally used as a fall back position when all else fails. The law defines in detail how NJ school boards may spend and hold money and it has become a favorite tactical defense of school board members who use the reference as an argument from intimidation. They know about really important stuff that you don’t.

Mark was not alone. Rich Kilpatrick claimed that the school board did not dump the budget problem back in the lap of the town and that the school board members are not playing political ping-pong. He intimated that the Mayor understood that the cut in courtesy busing was necessary anyway. Irene Benfatti spoke up to point out that the town could simply reinstate the money in the budget for the busing and it wouldn’t cost the town a cent. She didn’t mention the cost to the angry taxpayers.

What came out of this swirling mass of battlefield smoke? Essentially the school board is trying to push the town to back down from their position on the budget by using courtesy busing as a wedge issue. They are claiming that the town is responsible for safe passage of children, and that the town had better provide the money for courtesy busing, set up a “subscription” busing system by which parents pay for the service, or reduce the amount of the budget cuts so that the school can reinstate the original service. The school board has already brought attorney Steve Fogerty into the mix for additional firepower. The town committee and virtually all of the public speakers at these meetings are pushing right back. They consider the school board tactics to be calculated nonsense, like so many straw men propped up on the battlefield in a desperate attempt to appear like the school board is fighting from a position of strength. Obviously we cannot cut courtesy busing when the infrastructure and geography of Readington stands as it does today. The town committee and many residents simply want the school board to stop the charade, make the appropriate cuts elsewhere, and move on to more important issues.

In this case the truth lies not somewhere in the middle, but far closer to the statements made by parents and residents asking the school board to suck it up and fix the problem they created. It waddles like a duck, it quacks like a duck. Mark Berry and other members can protest that they are not taking the budget issue personally and that they are not letting angry emotions get the best of them, but their tight lips and throaty objections betray their play-acting.

The June 7 school board meeting was noteworthy in the tremendous turnout for award winners and retirees. In previous years, there was not enough organization so that winners of the Governor’s Teacher Award could be congratulated by students, parents and peers in public. This year whole classes of students were there with banners and cheers. That is good news. That is good news overshadowed by the petty actions of board members who would rather wallow in their own miserable muck than rise to the challenge put before them. The budget defeat was in part a statement of the depth of mistrust in the management by our school board and administration. The actions of the town committee were inevitable and were perhaps made more dramatic by the refusal of the school board to play ball. Instead of sulking and whining like a child who doesn’t want to play by the rules, our school board must learn from their mistakes and become better sports. Hey folks: make the necessary line item transfers or find another way to restore the busing without blaming the town committee for your own failure. After the game we can all go out for pizza and ice cream.