Strobert, Cali And Eccles Win Secaucus BOE Race

SECAUCUS, NJ — Joan Cali was able to keep her seat on the Secaucus Board of Education tonight, and she is joined by two newcomers to the board, Barbara Strobert and Mary Eccles.

However, other incumbent Board members did not fare so well this evening: Louis Giele and Norma Hanley did not win re-election to the board.

It remains unclear if Secaucus voters held the Board accountable for the fall-out over Dr. Robert Berckes earlier this year. Many in town expressed support for how the Board handled it, while just as many strongly disagreed.

On Aug. 6 of this year, the Secaucus Board of Education voted in a 5-3 vote to bring Dr. Berckes up on tenure charges before the state. If he is found guilty of violating tenure, he could very easily lose his job. The three Board members who voted not to bring tenure charges were Giele, Sharon DellaFave and Kathleen McFarlane. Of those three, only Giele was up for re-election today.

All the other Board members, including Cali and Hanley, voted to recommend Dr. Bob on tenure charges.

"I really think this was overkill and not handled in a progressive way," Giele told Patch today of how he voted. "I don't think the charges were legitimate enough to warrant such an extreme overreaction to what happened."

Dr. Bob is expected to have his disciplinary hearing before the state Dept. of Education in early December.

It was Secaucus superintendent Jennifer Montesano who asked the nine-member Board of Education to decide whether Dr. Bob's actions were serious enough to warrant him losing tenure. As has been reported, Montesano took issue back in April with the way Dr. Bob, assistant principal Jefferey Case and the high school resource officer handled a small marijuana and a pen knife found on a student at the high school. Dr. Bob alleges that Montesano told them to "get rid of it."

Berckes said he told Montesano he would give it to the police officer, who said it should be flushed down the toilet. Berckes has said publicly that he and the officer did that, and at the time Montesano had no objection.

But Montesano then suspended Dr. Bob and Case.