Atlantic City Board Member: ‘This Is A New $ 150,000 Job’

Atlantic City Board of Education Member John Devlin is calling out a move to hire a new Assistant Superintendent of Public Schools.

Many thought that yesterday’s hastily called special meeting was to begin the process to replace a retiring Assistant Superintendent.

Instead, Board Members found out for the first time that this is not the case. La‘Quetta Small (Superintendent of Public Schools) wants to create a brand new position.

The previous state monitor eliminated this position. Why would it be coming back now?

Also, we have confirmed that the Board Members did not receive their “packets” for this meeting until just hours before the meeting began. Again, why? What’s the rush? what’s the emergency?

“Packets” are provided to all board members and it contains a lot of supporting documentation regarding the agenda of the meeting.

The whole point is to receive the packet of information with enough time to read and formulate a position on the various issues that will be discussed at the board meeting.

We interviewed Board of Education Member Devlin before and after yesterday’s special meeting, which was called under the emergency heading of the “Doctrine of Necessity.”

Devlin told us:

“Although I support the decision to have an assistant superintendent to fill in legally in the absence of our superintendent …

”I don’t however think it’s fiscally responsible for the taxpayers of Atlantic City to have to bare the cost of two assistant superintendents of schools at the cost of over $150,000.00 a year each.”

“With the decreasing population of students and residents in Atlantic City I don’t believe the district warrants such an addition to staff at this time,” said Devlin.

The Atlantic City Board of Education is abusing the “Doctrine of Necessity.”

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I served two terms as a Board of Education Member in neighboring Ventnor City. We never used the “Doctrine of Necessity” one time in my 6 years.

The Atlantic City Board of Education has used it 6-7 times this year.

We have learned that they will be using it, again when it's time to fill the new Assistant Superintendent position.

Here is the troubling circumstances. The Atlantic City Board of Education Members have so many conflicts of interest, which prevents many of them from being able to vote on certain matters.

Some of the conflicts include (Board Members) having immediate family members working for the school district. This means without special approval, these conflicted board members can’t even cast a vote on the annual budget and other key matters.

They are using the “Doctrine of Necessity” to obtain approval to be able to cast their vote … where they would otherwise be conflicted from doing so.

We have been urging the state of New Jersey to do its job regarding oversight  … both at the City of Atlantic City and Board of Education level.

The mismanagement is out of control.