Toms River School Board Member Accuses Councilman Of Interference

TOMS RIVER, NJ — A Toms River Regional Board of Education member says a Toms River councilman is interfering in the selection of a new superintendent, trying to pressure board members to change their votes.

Board member Kathy Eagan, speaking at the start of Wednesday's board committee meetings, said the councilman called her and asked her to relay a message to another board member regarding how they were going to vote.

"I was told to tell someone on the committee that it would be to that person's benefit to change their vote," Eagan said. She did not identify the councilman or the board member who was to be contacted.

The school board started the search for a new superintendent last October, after David Healy announced he was retiring from the district. The interview process has been conducted in executive sessions that include only those board members who are not conflicted and can vote on the hiring. Eagan and Board President Joseph Nardini have family members who work in the district, and cannot vote on matters involving the superintendent.

The vote Eagan was referring to would have to be a straw poll of the board; official votes must be conducted in public, under New Jersey law.

"The whole process was kept very quiet," Eagan said. "What was ironic was when we were down to two names, all of a sudden the two names were out."

"This person who called me, who's a councilman, knew exactly who the votes were and who voted for what," she said, calling the situation "totally inappropriate."

Eagan called on the board to scrap the current search and start over, saying it should hire a private firm from outside to handle the search process.

"I feel like having someone not affiliated with the district might be best for the professionalism in the district," she said.

Executive sessions are held to discuss matters that require confidentiality — contract negotiations, personnel matters, items involving specific students — and it is a violation of the code of ethics for New Jersey school board members to reveal information from executive sessions.

Every school board member in the state must swear to abide by the code of ethics when they accept election to serve on a school board, and the oath is repeated yearly.

In 2018, the Toms River school board filed an ethics complaint against Christopher Raimann following an investigation into repeated incidents of information from executive sessions being revealed publicly. The ethics commission was preparing to send the complaint to the Office of Administrative Law for a hearing when Russell Corby, who signed the complaint as board president, and Raimann reached a settlement and the complaint was dropped.

Eagan started her statement on the matter by asking the board if any member had "gotten pressured by a phone call or in person by a council member to affect the outcome for finding a superintendent?"

Board member Lisa Contessa responded, saying "no," and Eagan said she wasn't asking for answers, she was asking rhetorically.

Later, Contessa questioned Eagan on the phone call.

"A councilman out of the clear blue called you to discuss?" Contessa said.

Eagan responded, "The councilman called me because they wanted to know about the academies, for their child who is going into high school. After that conversation the whole search for superintendent came up. At that point I was told to tell someone on the committe that it would be to that person's benefit to change their vote."

"I feel like the council person should not even have been involved," she said. "This whole process was kept very quiet and then all of a sudden people know who voted and how and what."

"I feel like it was a totally inappropriate thing to do," Eagan said.

Hiring an outside firm to conduct a new superintendent search would not be inexpensive; the district paid $21,000 to Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates to handle the search that led to the hiring of Healy, whose hiring was criticized in part because he was not from Toms River.

In October, the school board held six public meetings seeking input on what the community — staff, parents, taxpayers, and students — wanted in their next superintendent, and the overwhelming feedback was the community wanted someone from Toms River, who is familiar with the district's history, its traditions and its concerns.

It's not clear whether the board will pursue starting over on the search. Nardini, in response to Eagan's request, said the board would "take that under advisement."

You can watch the video here.

Note: This article has been updated to correct the amount of the cost for the superintendent search when David Healy was hired. Patch regrets the error.

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