The Verona Board of Education held its reorganization meeting on Tuesday night, welcoming new member Mike Boone and selecting its president and vice president. Pam Priscoe will continue as president, while Denise Verzella will succeed Diana Ferrera as vice president. Verzella was elected to the BOE in 2022.
The BOE also shuffled committee assignments for 2024. Ferrera and Priscoe will serve on the Education Committee, Verzella and Boone will be on Finance, Ferrera and Verzella will serve on Government and Policy, Boone and Chris Wacha will be on Buildings and Grounds, and Priscoe and Wacha will be on Athletics and Co-Curricular.
The board also adopted, for the first time, the New Jersey School Board Members Code of Ethics. It commits BOE members to make decisions for schoolchildren regardless of their ability, race, creed, sex, or social standing and to confine their board work to policy making, planning, and appraisal. The code also specifies that a BOE member should not “surrender my independent judgment to special interest or partisan political groups or to use the schools for personal gain or for the gain of friends.” In advance of the meeting, Superintendent Diane DiGiuseppe said that the ethics measure was not put before the board in response to any specific event. “It is just a best practice that Verona had not been doing in the past,” she said. “The Board of Education members should review the School Ethics Act and the Code of Ethics for School Board Members annually, so the reorganization meeting makes the most sense.”
Atletics Director Laura Palmerezzi recognized the girls volleyball team for winning the state championship, and recapped the achievements of all of the fall teams. She noted that volleyball finished the season ranked number 16 in the state with the record of 25 wins and four losses.
In the public comments portion of the meeting, two individuals spoke about an individual entering H.B. Whitehorne Middle School last month. MyVeronaNJ spoke to the Verona Police Department this morning, which said that the individual entered the building on December 6 and 7, when HBW was open for parent-teacher conferences but classes were not in session. The individual left the building without incident when requested to do so and was asked to not return. But the individual returned on December 8 at dismissal time, when doors were also open. After that incident, the individual was arrested and charged with defiant trespass. This is ordinarily a petty disorderly offense, but it becomes more serious when it occurs at a school. The individual who entered the building is well known to the VPD, which has repeatedly guided the person to mental health treatment. The individual is now barred from all BOE properties.
You can watch the meeting in full here.
The next BOE meeting is Tuesday, January 23.
