Local residents raise questions about staff, superintendent of Beach Haven School

During a public meeting with the Beach Haven Board of Education Tuesday, April 29, local residents, mostly parents of students at the Beach Haven School, expressed their concern over the number of teachers who have recently retired or accepted positions at other schools.

“When you see this exodus of staff in a short period of time, especially a staff this small, it alarms me because your educational program then is disrupted,” said Marcia Pietroski, a grandparent of a Beach Haven School student.

Photo by Jack Reynolds
Beach Haven School students and staff returned to
the building in September, after repairs had been
made due to damage from Superstorm Sandy.

Mary Louise Bellingeri and Sandra Close, president and vice president of the Beach Haven Board of Education respectively, told The SandPaper on Sunday that one part-time teacher has retired and another will be retiring at the end of the school year. Their positions – library/readers and writers workshop and technology as well as health and physical education – had been gradually cut down to part-time per their requests. A teacher for the health and physical education position will be hired for the new year, the board members said. The position for library/readers and writers workshop and technology has been split into two separate positions, both of which have been filled for the year.

“To try to find one person who’s qualified in both would have been, I feel, very difficult, and maybe they wouldn’t have been as great in both areas,” said Close. “We wanted to make sure that both areas have someone highly qualified, which was our reason for splitting it.”

Earlier in the year, the school’s part-time music teacher accepted a full-time position at another school. The position has already been filled at the Beach Haven School, the board members said.

“It’s hard when any of them move on,” said Close. “We’re so small; we only have one of everything, so we want to get the very best that we can get. We look extensively, no matter if it’s a teacher or a superintendent.”

According to the school board members, the school has a staff of about 18 and an enrollment of about 75 students.

During the meeting, the public also asked to know more about the credentials of the new superintendent, Eva Marie Raleigh. Raleigh responded by saying she worked as principal at Lakehurst Elementary School for three years. She said she has also taught high school business math, among other positions.

“My contract would not have been approved by the executive county superintendent if I didn’t have the proper credentials to be a superintendent,” Raleigh told The SandPaper in a phone interview. “He approves all superintendent contracts within the county. I have to go to him for approval before they can even offer it to me.

“I have been so successful everywhere I’ve been, and I wanted to bring that here, and I’d like to get to doing that; I’d like to focus on that. For the job I was hired to do, I’d like to focus on that,” she added.

Bellingeri and Close said the school hired the New Jersey School Boards Association in February 2013 to help facilitate the search for a new superintendent to replace the school’s former administrator, Patricia Daggy, who retired later in June.

Throughout the superintendent search process, school students and staff attended the Eagleswood Township Elementary School due to building damage to the Beach Haven School from Superstorm Sandy. Bellingeri and Close said the board held public meetings on and off the Island to get a better understanding of the qualifications the community was looking for in a superintendent. They said the board received about 30 applications for the job and interviewed nearly a dozen candidates before deciding to hire Raleigh in July.

“We did an extensive background search on all of them,” said Close. “We contacted all of her (Raleigh’s) references; we did a thorough check.”

This past February, concerned parent Jen Tomlinson sent an Open Public Records request for Raleigh’s resume to the Beach Haven School District as well as the NJSBA. After being told the document was not on file, Tomlinson said she filed a Denial of Access Complaint through the New Jersey Government Records Council in March and was again informed the resume is not available.

Tomlinson remains frustrated with the fact that she has not been provided with the superintendent’s resume.

Bellingeri and Close said the board has Raleigh’s application from the NJSBA, but they do not have Raleigh’s resume on file because the NJSBA instructed them not to keep any of the documents they received from the candidates.

“There’s no reason we would not share the resume if it was available,” said Close. “She (Raleigh) is highly qualified, or she wouldn’t have been one of the four that made the finals.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, some of the parents threatened to pull their kids from the school over what they feel is a lack of communication between the public and the school board.

“I’m sad to say that next year I don’t think my son is going to be attending this school because of the way it’s being run,” said Pat O’Donnell.

Supporting Raleigh, Bellingeri and Close said they encourage the community to address their concerns with the board.

“She’s been really nothing but attacked since she began. I don’t think they’ve given her an opportunity,” said Close.

— Kelley Anne Essinger


This article was published in The SandPaper.