Hopkins Resigns From Montclair Board Of Education

MONTCLAIR, NJ — A Montclair Board of Education member resigned from her post during their meeting earlier this week.

Crystal Hopkins announced her resignation – effective immediately – from the school board at Monday’s meeting (watch the video here). Her term was due to end in 2024.

“While this decision was extremely difficult, my commitment and work ethic will not allow me to do mediocre work for this community and the thousands of children our decisions affect,” Hopkins said.

She continued with the following message for the school community:

“But I do want to leave the board members and community with this – as someone who's grown up in this community – we all are here as community working together. And what I have seen at the last few meetings is disappointing … to know that we are not engaging in the work of making sure that we are producing whole students into the world. Our job here is to educate, advocate and do the best that we can by this community. And in the last two meetings, I have not seen that. I'm disappointed. I am dismayed. I would really like for us again to work together. I look forward to doing things in the community that allow me to continue this work. But I am choosing that today, I will be stepping away from being a board member.”

Hopkins received a round of respectful applause from her fellow board members after announcing her resignation.

The current members of the board include Melanie Deysher, Monk Inyang, Yvonne Bouknight, Phaedra Dunn, Brian Fleischer, Eric Scherzer, Allison Silverstein and Kathryn Weller-Demming.

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