Midland Park June 1, 2011 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 3 Borough council restructures police department The Midland Park Police Department’s hierarchy is being reconfigured as of July 1 to have two lieutenants and two sergeants instead of the current single lieutenant and three-sergeant structure. The borough council last week promoted Sgt. Michael Marra to lieutenant and Detective Patrolman John Gibbons to detective sergeant. “We have been discussing this for several months. We budgeted for it. It was recommended by the chief,” said Councilman Patrick “Bud” O’Hagan in making the motion. Mayor Joseph Monahan suggested The Midland Park Board of Education last week reassigned special education teacher Eileen Horn to Midland Park High School over the objection of the parents of the class she has been teaching at the elementary level for 18 years. Horn, a lead teacher in the LLD class in Godwin School, will be a collaborative teacher at the high school. “She is running a perfect engine. Why move her somewhere else,” said Noel Zammit, the father of a six-year-old in the class, after the meeting. Lee Barber, whose six-year-old daughter has cerebral palsy, said that “it was disheartening and disconcerting that a decision of this magnitude could be made without the input of the key members of the children’s Child Study Team, namely their respective parents.” “Is it the direction of the board to move people around without regard for the students?” Barber asked following the unanimous board vote, charging that he and the Parents don’t want special education teacher reassigned other parents had been blindsided by the decision. The parents of all six of the students in the K-1 class attended the meeting to support Barber’s remarks. Board President Robert Schiffer said that the move had been recommended by the administration as “a way that services all children.” “We believe it’s in the best interest of the students to make this move. We listen to the administrative staff. That’s why we hire them,” Schiffer said. Barber explained that at a time when special needs children want and need consistency, his daughter had been moved around and the aides had changed, “tearing apart the fiber that is the foundational building block to success in the classroom.” Zammit praised Horn for her ability to handle children of differing disabilities successfully within the same class. He said his daughter had not been able to walk when she entered the program, but was now able to function, in part because of the high (continued on page 13) tabling the motion for further discussion, but there was no support from the council members. O’Hagan explained after the meeting that the council felt the detective should hold the sergeant rank to facilitate his job. “These two men have earned a promotion,” he said. Monahan said after the meeting that he recommended carrying the motion to a future meeting because the item was not on the previously issued agenda and because “there wasn’t an urgent need to force the issue” that evening. “Given the magnitude of the decision it wasn’t fair to the public not to provide advance notice via the agenda …and it also put those voting on it in an unfair position of having to vote in what I observed to be a hesitant manner.” O’Hagan, who heads the police committee, said the governing body is gearing up for the retirement of Chief John Casson at the mandatory age of 65 next July. He said the council also expects to begin advertising for a new patrolman trained through the alternate route and hopes to have someone in place this summer to get to the desired complement of 14, still one less than in past years. Marra joined the department in 1986 after graduating from Passaic County Community College with an associate’s degree in criminal justice and was promoted to sergeant in 2004. Gibbons, who joined the department in 2001, replaced Casson as the deparment’s detective when he became chief in 2007. A lifelong Midland Park resident, he graduated from Midland Park High School and the Bergen County Police and Fire Academy. He is also a member of the Midland Park Volunteer Fire Department, and served two years as chief in 2000-01.