Oral Argument scheduled for Hoboken BoE v NJDoE/HoLa Trustees


Well folks, the waiting is over.

Briefs are in, and oral argument has been scheduled.

At 10:00 AM on January 31, attorneys and amici curae will present their cases to the Appellate Division in  Hoboken Board of Education v NJ Department of Education, HoLa Board of Trustees.

The "HoLa lawsuit," as it's known in Hoboken, has been the subject of a years-long disinformation campaign by HoLa Trustees.  HoLa Trustee Anthony Petrosino's "education attack-blog"  has been bashing public schools since he was fired from his $144.5K Assistant to Hoboken Superintendent job in 2009.  Along with fellow HoLa board members, he has worked to unseat members of the Hoboken Board of Education.  In 2016  HoLa Trustees Frank Raia and Susan Costimiris  ran an unsuccessful   'Trojan Horse' slate of BoE candidates  whose main platform issue promised to "end the lawsuit."

The disinformation about the lawsuit has been designed to turn public opinion against the Hoboken Board of Education.  

For the record, it is not about ending the HoLa Charter.

The lawsuit is about holding the NJ Department of Education's 'feet to the fire' demanding that the state complies with its statutory duties to monitor the granting, renewal and expansion of charters for the segregative effect.  

That is the issue that this country must resolve, state by state. Trump's appointment of  anti-public education, pro-charter billionaire Betsy DeVos,  to head the U.S. Department of Education suggests national policies hostile to public schools, such as reduction in funding.

Will our courts  protect public education from increasingly hostile policies intended to drain public schools of resources and privatize public education?

The outcome of this decision will reverberate across America.  

That is why two of America's most powerful legal and civil rights organizations have aligned themselves with the Hoboken School District.  These civil rights organizations have joined the Hoboken District's Appeal to overturn NJ-DOE Acting Commissioner David C. Hespe's  March 20, 2015 decision  on the 7th/8th grade expansion of HoLa Dual Language Charter School. 

They are  the American Civil Liberties Union (NJ Chapter)   and  New Jersey’s leading legal advocate for public school children, the Education Law Center.    

Folks, this is not just a Hoboken issue; it is a national issue. Do our states ignore the segregative effect when granting charter schools going forward?  Do our state education officials enforce or ignore their own rules?

The Hoboken Board of Education has quietly endured  hostile propaganda (produced on HoLa Trustee Petrosino's "education blog'), quietly choosing the moral high road.

The ACLU's amicus brief succinctly states why they have entered the Appeal, why they are standing with the Hoboken Board of Education:



GA Note: The ACLU's data correlates with GA's,  and is diametrically opposed to  HoLa Trustee Petrosino's "education blog" which stated:
"One should keep in mind the following... The demographic differences between the Hoboken School DIstrict at the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades are minimal,..."
click image to read


The dishonest HoLa Trustee Petrosino even posted a cooked graph (corrected by GA below). The cooked graph was  part of Petrosino's disinformation campaign against the Hoboken Board of Education, to advance the confabulation that Hoboken district demographics are similar to HoLa's.

They aren't.   GA's numbers correlate with the ACLU's.  Petrosino has been exposed as a lying gasbag.



Well folks, it's in the Appellate's hands. I believe the hearing is open to the public.

Comments

Post a Comment