![\"\"](\"http:\/\/hudsoncountyview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Eleana-Little.png\")
<\/a>Screenshot via Facebook Live.<\/p>\nBy Dan Israel\/Hudson County View<\/p>\n
The encounter was prompted by Ward E Councilwoman Eleana Little, who took to the podium during public comment Fernandez\u2019s contract which expires next year, which was eventually approved 6-2<\/a> despite several calls to hold off on the vote.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to thank everyone who is here tonight to participate in the democratic process, whether we disagree or agree on this issue. This is what community engagement looks like. And I want to be clear, I fully support the teachers who are here tonight. They deserve a fair contract,\u201d the downtown councilwoman said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut that is a separate question from the question at hand. A vote to extend the superintendent\u2019s contract for five years, more than the previous renewal of three years, is a commitment to the same direction for the Jersey City public schools from now until 2031. It is a vote of confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Little also thanked Fernandez for her decades of service, but added a \u201crushed five-year commitment\u201d was not warranted amid ongoing \u201csignificant issues\u201d in the district, echoing several of the reasons Mayor James Solomon objected to an extension or renewal, as HCV first reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n Little continued by pointing to metrics that she felt didn\u2019t warrant confidence in Fernandez.<\/p>\n \u201cLess than one third of our students are proficient in math, only forty one percent are proficient in English language arts, and our high school graduation rate is only seventy eight percent,\u201d Little said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the latest part of the special education audit, that was delayed for seven years, was so bad it was sent straight to the Hudson County Prosecutor\u2019s Office<\/a>. Further, the Jersey City Board of Education has increased their tax levy by over two hundred million dollars in just the last two years.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, Little took swipes at Fernandez\u2019s salary, which was increase to around $1.5 million cumulatively over those five years, as the highest paid in the state at nearly $400,000 per year \u2013 although members of the board vocally disagreed.<\/p>\n Board Vice President Dejon Morris then responded, and by extension Solomon, and \u2013 as expected at this point \u2013 he didn\u2019t pull any of his punches.<\/p>\n First, he chided Little for supporting the initially proposed 20 percent tax increase<\/a> \u2013 then 15 percent increase <\/a>\u2013 without first seeing the budget, then voted alongside the rest of the council (9-0) to introduce the $886.5 million budget with a 15.5 percent tax increase<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI find it absurd that people come in here, Madam Councilwoman, and criticize our governmental process on renewing our superintendent\u2019s contract when you voted in favor of the $200,000 contracts for the deputy mayor of education who does absolutely nothing compared to education,\u201d Morris exclaimed, although the council did not vote on deputy mayor appointments.<\/p>\n \u201cIn addition to that, you talk about seven years of failure that we have, well, how about you\u2019re supporting an initiative for a mayor that\u2019s trying to do a 20 percent tax increase<\/a>, and now 15 percent<\/a>, to the council. And then you have the audacity to come up here and try to tell us what we\u2019re supposed to be doing when you admitted on the record that you would vote for 20 percent. So you have the audacity to do that?\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly after Morris\u2019s remarks, an unidentified shouting man was escorted out of the room by police before the officers reentered the meeting without much explanation, with the attendee out of sight of the camera.<\/p>\n Board President Noemi Velazquez continued that it is not the norm for the BOE to rebut public comment, but decided to let Morris opine because Little and company \u201cdid not have the decency\u201d to stay to hear her response after their remarks at the previous board meeting they attended and spoke at.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time the two have exchanged words as back in May, Velazquez responded angrily to requests<\/a> from Little that she made in response to the arrest of Pecot.<\/p>\n Trustee Natalia Ioffe, who spoke at Wednesday\u2019s council meeting as a resident, pointed out that the school district\u2019s over $1 billion budget<\/a> is actually nearly equal to the city\u2019s roughly $886 million budget<\/a> if you remove the nearly $210 million in charter school funding.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fun fact that I shared with the council, and I think it merits also sharing today with our educators, so the city, the mayor announced their budget at 886 million dollars total,\u201d Ioffe said.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody knows that our budget is 1,960,000 dollars. However, if you take away the charter school payout of 210 million dollars, we end up with the same 886 million dollars. So currently, the board of ed and City Council matches in their budgets.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Ioffe, there was a lot of misinformation circulating online prior to the meeting, specifically regarding Fernandez\u2019s new $1.5 million salary over the five years once her new contract starts.<\/p>\n During public comment, parents had referenced that the salaries of five recent top hires in the Solomon administration that were recently made public amount to nearly $1.4 million.<\/p>\n Ioffe took issue with the fact that those numbers were made public through an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request in comparison the BOE who has all of their \u201claundry out there\u201d to allow the public to criticize them.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is part of the democratic process, whether\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0a raise or a contract, everything is out there for all the world to see and examine,\u201d Ioffe said.<\/p>\n \u201cThankfully, the folks who OPRA\u2019d the city salaries, I noticed that if you add up the entire municipal council budget, which encompasses the city council members and their staff, is approximately 1.4 million dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n Ioffe continued that the total City Council budget, including council members and staff, also totals\u00a0nearly $1.4 million, meanwhile the BOE has no staff nor salary.<\/p>\n \u201cWe get a tray of sandwiches and a takeout for our monthly meetings, which is fantastic. We also get compensated for training \u2013 and sodas \u2013 for training conferences, which is what keeps us knowledgeable about our job,\u201d Ioffe said.<\/p>\n \u201c. .. And so having said that, one could also argue that by not getting paid, this governing body saves taxpayers one point four million dollars a year. Surely we can afford a million and a half over five years for our one employee?\u201d<\/p>\n Ioffe concluded by noting that Fernandez presented budgets in her first two years as superintendent without tax increases before hikes were incorporated in the last two years, adding she inherited a mess in the Business Department that she has sought to clean up.<\/p>\n Velazquez later responded to Little when voting, stating that Bryant \u2013 who she said Solomon has been eyeing as superintendent \u2013 and even former beloved Superintendents Dr. Charles Epps Jr. and Franklin Walker pale in comparison to Fernandez.<\/p>\n \u201cI have to speak with our mayor about the beautiful yet disgusting letter, which we\u2019ve never had from any other mayor. We\u2019ve had disagreements with mayors. We have had mayors who want to come and make the district to their image,\u201d the board president said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019ve never had a mayor put such a disgusting letter publicly against the board of education, a district that is educating their kids. Never. And I think that was lower than low. Can\u2019t go any further.\u201d<\/p>\n Velazquez said that, although former First Lady Michelle Obama famously encouraged Americans that \u201cWhen they go low, we go high,\u201d she was \u201cgoing to hell\u201d with her comments on Solomon regarding Fernandez and insinuated she had received death threats.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at her credentials and put them together, Mr. Mayor, with the person that you want to put in her place, no matter how many papers the other resume has, it does not compete at all,\u201d Velazquez said.<\/p>\n She later directed her venom directly at Solomon, while doubling down on her support for Fernandez.<\/p>\n \u201cI am rejecting, rejecting everything that is in that disgusting letter sent to all the city, the entire city, by a mayor who should be fixing the City Hall and stop hiring people that aren\u2019t even from here, don\u2019t know us, know nothing about actual pedagogy, and can only open charter schools,\u201d Velazquez said.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, they\u2019re public schools, but they take away from the public district, take away from those same teachers that they went to: \u2018Vote for me.\u2019 Or maybe in Spanish: \u2019Si, se puede.\u2019 No, no se puede. We ain\u2019t going nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jersey City municipal and school board officials saw their clash again hit a fever pitch last night in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":942638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,340585,255100,172023,262814,262816,405,403,5226,5225,363811,350544,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-942637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-dejon-morris","tag-eleana-little","tag-james-solomon","tag-jersey-city-board-of-education","tag-natalia-ioffe","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-noemi-velazquez","tag-norma-fernandez","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116939210751754997","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}