JERSEY CITY, NJ— Change For Children Board of Education candidates Asheenia Johnson, Sonia N. Cintron, and Karen Poliski today called for the Education Matters slate of candidates for Jersey City Board of Education to disavow the dark money PAC spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect them. Unlike their opponents on the Education Matters ticket, the Change For Children candidates have been completely open and transparent regarding all campaign contributions and expenditures. In this campaign, transparency matters – and the people of Jersey City deserve nothing less.

Jersey City residents just received a campaign mailer promoting the Education Matters candidates paid for by a mysterious dark money PAC whose contributors and expenditures are hidden and disguised to cover up how many hundreds of thousands of dollars they are spending to elect this slate. This is the same secretive group that has supported Education Matters candidates for years, and the same secretive group that went to great lengths to elect the corrupt leadership of Board of Education that was later arrested for trading cash for contracts and stealing taxpayer money for personal use. Because of this dark money PAC, Jersey City residents have no way of knowing if or how many of the recipients of those crooked contracts have contributed to the PAC. The Change For Children candidates, on the other hand, have been completely transparent regarding their supporters – they have contributors from throughout the city, including business owners, developers, parents, and working families who believe in the vision of the Change For Children progressive platform and the need for leadership, commitment, and know-how to make the changes needed on the Board.

This kind of corrupt divide-and-conquer strategy won’t work and has no place in Jersey City – it is bad for our city, bad for our children, and bad for education. The Change For Children candidates call on the Education Matters candidates to immediately and totally disavow this mysterious dark money group and to come clean to the people of Jersey City.

Change For Children encourages those interested in better schools for Jersey City schoolchildren and their families to sign up for updates at ChangeForChildrenJC.com and to follow the campaign on Facebook @ChangeforChildrenJC, Twitter @changeteamJC, and Instagram @ChangeForChildrenJC.

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