Mr. Hinsdale, Concerning your request for a response to the interactions among elected members of the West Windsor Township government, speaking for the WW-P Board of Education, it would be inappropriate to comment. Further, there is no matter before the board of education for us to enable or inhibit. Separately, I would like to clarify the events. At the June 11 WW Council meeting, it was decided to invite Dr. Aderhold to a subsequent meeting to discuss the use of Class III officers in WW-P schools. It was also agreed that council members would send any questions they may have on the Shared Services Agreement to Dr. Aderhold, so he could be better prepared to respond to them. I assume you would agree that this was a reasonable course of action. As Dr. Aderhold stated in his June 22 email to the council members, to save time at the meeting, he was attaching written responses to a number of their questions but felt some could be better answered during the presentation. As I recall the June 25 meeting, Ms. Hamilton’s concerns were discussed by both Dr. Aderhold and Lt. Lee. Since the original intent was to address all of the questions on Monday, for you to characterize “to be discussed on Monday” as being nonresponsive was simply wrong and misleading. To quote one of my earlier emails to you, “the issue of school security and student safety is a complicated and, currently an emotionally-charged topic, with groups of well-meaning individuals offering different, sometimes conflicting, solutions.” Going forward, let’s assume that all parties, especially those we don’t agree with, are at least acting in good faith. Anthony Fleres President, Board of Education West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District ________________________________________ From: John K. Hinsdale [hin@alma.com] Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 11:19 PM To: AMiller@westwindsortwp.com; JBahree@westwindsortwp.com; LGeevers@westwindsortwp.com; AHamilton@westwindsortwp.com; VManzari@westwindsortwp.com; HMarathe@westwindsortwp.com; Fleres, Anthony; Kaish, Michele; Cheng, Isaac; Herts, Carol; Ho, Louisa; Juliana, Rachel; Krug, Dana; Zhong, Yu; Whitfield, Martin; Aderhold, David Subject: Re: June 27, 2018 Discussion of Class III issue on Facebook Hi all, I'd like to follow up on my FYI Email below from two Fridays ago (6/29) about the harshly and unfairly critical online post from the Mayor of 6/27. Last time I wrote: > This Email is for your information only. It is not a complaint or any other kind of request for action and response is entirely optional. This time it is a complaint and I am requesting a response (from the School District). I call your attention to a comment from the Mayor, in the middle of page 8 (discussion is attached again for your convenience): Comment from Hemant Marathe at June 27, 2018, 5:19pm "Ayesha Krishnan Hamilton as a council women ... You were offered an opportunity to comment on the agreement twice in writing and not a single comment was received from you." To date I had taken the basis for this criticism to be credible, but it now appears actually to have been made up by the Mayor, something I'm now used to. However in this case the School District appears also to have contributed to the circumstances that allow this, and this is a real problem for me. Today I received, by way of a response to an OPRA document request, an Email Q&A between the Township and District preceding the 6/25 Council meeting. The 6/25 meeting was the one where Superintendent Aderhold spoke, and at which Council had yet more Q&A about the Class III program. I've attached that here as two files, Dr. Aderhold's 6/22 Email and its Q&A attachment. At the very end of the Q&A from WW Council, is the District's (non-)response to the inquiry about bias training: [Q. from Hamilton] "2. Detailed description of the type of training that the WWPD and/or school district will be providing to Class III officers to address issues of unconscious bias. Will any kind of training be provided to address these issues and what will the scope of that training be?" And the (non-)response from the District: "To be discussed on Monday." [i.e., 6/25/18 Council meeting] As the Mayor was included in this pre-meeting Q&A discussion there is no possible basis for his criticism of the Council member's waiting until the meeting to pose her question: it was simply not answered at all in advance by the District. Again, I am used to this kind of thing from the Mayor, but I cannot tolerate its enablement by the District, to whose care I entrust my kids every day. I need a bit more rectitude in that arena. I would like some response from someone in the District (I don't care who, any Board member, Superintendent, etc.) as to what you think of this, and whether you think it is OK. If I don't hear back I am going to assume you are all OK with this. I hope it is clear why this is a problem. I am making this request not as a WW taxpayer but as a parent with kids in the WW-P schools. Looking forward to hearing back, John Hinsdale On Fri, Jun 29, 2018 at 10:26:32AM -0400, John K. Hinsdale wrote: > > To: > Members of West Windsor Town Council (5) > Mayor of West Windsor, Hemant Marathe > Members of West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education (9) > WW-P Superintendent of Schools, David Aderhold, Ed.D. > > From: John Hinsdale > > Dear Members of Council, Mayor Marathe, Members of the School Board, and Dr. Aderhold -- > > Following up on my message yesterday, attached is an updated version of that online discussion. I send it because it includes new commentary from the Mayor on the topic in that closed, members-only forum. This would appear to be the final version of the discussion, now that the unelected/unappointed private citizen who solely moderates the forum has blocked access to further contributions to the thread. > > You may have heard of recent court decisions saying that it is not OK for a government executive to conduct discussions on social media that block legitimate citizen contributors: > > https://knightcolumbia.org/content/knight-institute-v-trump-lawsuit-challenging-president-trumps-blocking-critics-twitter > > This was in the news with respect to President Trump blocking users on Twitter whose opinions he did not like. I believe the same thing is happening here. Latecomers to the discussion (maybe they were away on vacation) cannot contribute. In any case, any access to the forum itself is controlled arbitrarily. It is also replete with fake accounts which post in the same sub-threads as the Mayor's. > > I'm not sure that this tainting of the democratic process could or should affect the decision making that needs to occur with respect to the Class III program. Perhaps it should. But I will say that all of this will cease to be a problem once y'all start involving everyone like you're supposed to, instead of ramming this through during the quiet summer months, which it would appear are not so quiet. > > Thank you for your time and consideration. This Email is for your information only. It is not a complaint or any other kind of request for action and response is entirely optional. > > Sincerely, > > John Hinsdale > 38 Quaker Road, West Windsor > > > > > On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 08:15:41AM -0400, John K. Hinsdale wrote: > > > > To: > > Members of West Windsor Town Council (5) > > Mayor of West Windsor, Hemant Marathe > > Members of West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education (9) > > WW-P Superintendent of Schools, David Aderhold, Ed.D. > > > > From: John Hinsdale > > > > > > Dear Members of Council, Mayor Marathe, Members of the School Board, and Dr. Aderhold -- > > > > For your information, attached is a PDF file of a discussion going on Facebook since 9:40am yesterday, concerning the Class III officers issue. I send it in the hope that it will be useful to you. > > > > > > Sincerely, > > > > John Hinsdale > > 38 Quaker Road, West Windsor > > Please be advised that the Township of West Windsor is subject to the New Jersey Open Public Records Act. As such, any email sent or received by the Township may be subject to a records request.