Page 6 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • January 16, 2013 Area Local and regional boards reorganize by Frank J. McMahon The Franklin Lakes K-8 and Ramapo Indian Hills Regional school boards have reorganized, with both boards electing new officers. This was the first time both school boards reorganized at the beginning of the calendar year since both decided to follow a new state law that allows school boards to move their elections to the November general election date. Boards that switch to the November election are not required to put their annual budgets up for a public vote as long as the spending plans remain at or below the state mandated cap on the tax levy increase. At the K-8 school board meeting, newly elected board members Michael Ben-David, Jacqueline “Jackie” Veliky, and Shirley O’Reilly were sworn in as trustees. Nominations for the positions of president and vice president were then made. After board members Susan McGowan and James Martino were nominated for the position of president, both made a statement as to their qualifications. McGowan, who was the first trustee nominated, was then elected 5-4, with board members Ben-David, Lawrence Loprete, McGowan, O’Reilly, and Craig Urciuoli voting for McGowan and board members Christine Christopoul, Richard Koenigsberg, Martino and Veliky voting against election. Loprete was then nominated by Ben-David for the position of vice president. After Martino, a second nominee for the position, withdrew his name, Loprete was elected 8-1 with Urciuoli the only board member to vote against his election. The board approved the 2013 meeting dates, the implementation of the 2012-13 school budget, the adoption of the policy manual and the district’s organizational chart, and the existing curriculum and textbooks. The trustees also approved the appointments of Michael Solokas as board secretary/business administrator, qualified purchasing agent, custodian of public record, public agency compliance officer, and security officer; Fogarty and O’Hara as the board attorneys; Nisovaccia & Company as the board’s auditor; Cheryl Best as affirmative action officer; and Mary Beth Korpics as substance awareness coordinator. At the regional school board meeting, Wyckoff representative Lynn Budd was elected board president and Isabelle Lanini, also a Wyckoff representative, was elected vice president. Both votes were 9-0. The regional board then voted to pass several resolutions setting the meeting schedule for the year, to appoint Frank Ceurvels as board secretary and to designate him as the public agency compliance officer and custodian of record, and to approve several other appointments for the 2013 calendar year. Budd replaces Ira Belsky, who served on the board for 10 years, and was president for the last two years. Belsky opted not to seek reelection. Lanini replaces Budd. At the last meeting at which Belsky presided, he focused on classroom and educational excellence, stressing that the foremost consideration of the board should be identifying, increasing, and rewarding instructional excellence in the classroom, and identifying and remedying, or discarding, instructional mediocrity. To ensure that occurs, he said there needs to be an unrelenting focus on the instructional performance of the teachers, supervisors, and administrators, and on the academic performance of the students who attend the district’s two high schools. “I can’t argue strongly enough that this focus on educational excellence in the classroom must remain the number one priority of our district,” Belsky said.