The City Council of Jersey City will have a first reading of a resolution, next Wednesday, to allow the Mayor to appoint the members to the Board of Education and remove the democratic process of the citizenry electing people to the Board. This is clearly a vote of no confidence in two native Jersey City African American men, Franklin Walker and Lorenzo Richardson.

What happens in the dark, always comes to light. Controlling the Board of Education has always been the goal of Steven Fulop. I warned people of this years ago and I stand by that statement today. Fulop is the father of everything that has gone wrong in this district over the last 8-10 years. From his insidious relationship with former state monitor Catherine Coyle who was ultimately responsible for the fiscal mismanagement that led to hundreds of teachers receiving pink slips, to his clandestine meeting with Chris Christie appointee Christopher Cerf and former Board of Ed members to orchestrate the removal of Charles T. Epps to bring in Marcia V. Lyles as the superintendent which led to the state of chaos the Board is in today.

Fulop is trying to usurp democracy and pander to his special interest friends which was evident last night when he made an appearance to swear in the two LeFrak funded candidates to the board and then quickly left before listening to the concerns of the community.

Under his Superintendent Lyles and his crony Cathy Coyle, the Board was bloated with law firms, vendors and overpaid consultants who all had ties to this mayor.

A mayoral appointed board will lead to overcrowded classrooms, privatization, closing of schools, selling of property to developers and expansion of Charter Schools with no oversight- which has seemingly been the plan all along.

Fulop should have been worried about the crisis that he set into motion with his need for power and control instead of rewarding abatements to billionaire developers and starving the schools of desperately needed funding, Using the resignation of Board members for personal and health reasons, and the investigation of a board member Fulop used to do his dirty work is merely a smoke and mirror tactic that we have come to know from this mayor.