Zisa-backed school trustees sworn, editors could care less

On the public Hackensack River walkway behind Pep Boys, city of Hackensack garbage cans were brimming on Sunday. An old Costco Wholesale shopping cart and other metal parts were left near a second can, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Hackensack residents won't find a word in The Record today about the swearing in of two school board members backed by the Zisa family -- a curse the city can't seem to shake.

Instead, Editor Deirdre Sykes resorts to another gee-whiz photo and story on Page 1 -- this one about lightning hitting a tree and igniting a Glen Rock house next door to the assistant fire chief (A-1).

All's well that ends well, I guess.

Mordaga leaving

Sykes and Staff Writer John Seasly do have Hackensack news today, but it has nothing to do with the city's failing elementary schools, a ballooning school budget or the attempted political comeback of former four-term Mayor Jack Zisa and brother Ken, the disgraced police chief.

Instead, they lead Local with the expected news that Mike Mordaga, a decorated police officer and detective, is leaving as the city's $150,000-a-year civilian police director after three years in the job (L-1).

Mordaga took over in February 2013, several months after a jury convicted Ken Zisa of insurance fraud and official misconduct charges.

The insurance fraud charge was thrown out by an appeals court, but the former police chief still faces a retrial on the official misconduct charge. 

The city, which has abolished the position of police chief, also has spent more than $8 million defending and settling police officers' lawsuits against Ken Zisa, who also was a Democratic state Assemblyman.

Team Hackensack

The reporter forgets to mention that Jack and Ken Zisa were prominent backers of Team Hackensack, which saw two of its three board candidates sworn in on Tuesday night in the high school media center.

The Zisas even went so far as improperly obtaining the addresses of teachers union members, and sending them letters inviting them to a Team Hackensack barbecue at the home of Anthony C. Zisa, Ken's son, who is a high school teacher.

Francis W. Albolino
 (Credit: Hackensack Board of Education)

24-year veteran

In a broadcast of the Board of Education meeting, board President Jason Nunnermacker praised Francis W. Albolino for 24 years of service as a board member or president and presented him with a plaque.

However, Nunnermacker didn't list a single accomplishment by Albolino, who retired from the volunteer position on Tuesday night.

Truck hits tree

Of course, it's possible that Seasly covered Tuesday night's Hackensack school board reorganization, but that local editors ordered the story held for breaking news -- a garbage truck hitting a tree in Ridgewood (L-3).

Page 1

Sykes continues to run state and national politics on the front page in place of real news, long after readers have gotten sick and tired of reading about the presidential campaign (A-1).

Still, The Record's story doesn't mention Governor Christie again stood behind GOP front-runner Donald Trump's left shoulder as the billionaire racist declared victory in five more primaries on Tuesday (see NJ.com: Chris, Donald and Mary Pat).

The Woodland Park daily is the only major newspaper in the state that failed to call for Christie's resignation after he dropped out of the race in February, and threw his support behind Trump.

Editors cheat us on local school elections and so much more

A sample ballot for Tuesday's school election in Hackensack shows voters can choose three out of nine candidates to fill seats on the Board of Education, above. They also will have their say on a tax levy of $79 million to support a total school budget of $104 million, below.

School taxes represent nearly half of the total property tax bill in Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You can't miss the big, black headline on the front page of The Record today:

"Battle for New York"

But what about the battle over Hackensack schools and those in other towns that are having Board of Education elections next Tuesday?

In the past 10 days, Editor Deirdre Sykes has been choking readers will endless reporting on the City Council race in Paterson (see the latest on Tuesday's L-6).

Sykes, who hated covering school elections when she was running the local-news section, seems to find them just as distasteful now that she is running the whole paper.

$104M budget

She ignored the Hackensack board's March 31 approval of a $104 million school budget for 2016-17, and still hasn't reported nine candidates are fighting over three seats on the board that runs Bergen County's biggest system.

Today, an ad for one of the slates, Citizens for Better Schools, appears on Page 5 of the Hackensack Chronicle, the weekly delivered on Fridays with the Woodland Park daily, North Jersey Media Group's flagship. 

That slate represents the first chance in many years to end the status quo on a school board that ignores low test scores and fails to engage parents in the education of their children.

Yet, trustees have been known to spend more per pupil than the well-respected Ridgewood system.

Plus, they are paying the superintendent and top administrators almost as much or more than Governor Christie.

What does Sykes think about that? Who knows? 

She has virtually ignored Hackensack schools in recent years, and hasn't assigned a reporter to cover a board meeting in many moons.

Voter forum

All nine candidates were invited to speak to parents and grandparents on Thursday night at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Hackensack, but only three attended.

Lawrence E. Eisen, Lancelot Powell and Victor E. Sasson -- who call themselves Citizens for Better Schools -- heard complaints about a rude and dismissive Board of Education president.

That stuffed shirt has shown his abiding distaste for the city's schools by twice running unsuccessfully for City Council since 2013.

And even though 90 percent of parents are in favor of school uniforms, trustees have turned a deaf ear to their appeals.

Veteran board member Francis W. Albolino attended the forum with his wife, and announced that he is leaving the board for good at the April 26 reorganization meeting.

In view of the sad condition of some Hackensack schools, no one at the forum put him on the spot and asked him to explain just exactly what the F he has been doing for 24 years.

A photo of Food Editor Esther Davidowitz from her Twitter page.

$1 tacos

Elisa Ung, The Record's chief restaurant critic, thinks nothing of blowing a couple of hundred dollars of the company's money on a meal at an expensive steakhouse.

Today, though, her Informal Dining review has her literally bottom feeding at Mexico Deli Restaurant, which slings $1 tacos in the city of Passaic.

Yummy. You can order tacos filled with tongue, head or ear from animals that were pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones, and likely were raised in horrifying conditions.

I don't know about you, but I stopped eating shit years ago.

I've eaten plenty of tacos and other Mexican food in Passaic over the years, but today stick with fish tacos, such as those served at Taqueria Los Gueros.

In a tweet today, Food Editor Esther Davidowitz refers to Ung's review and describes Mexico Deli Restaurant as "taco bliss," but I'll bet she wouldn't touch one with a 10-foot pole.

More on the sad state of Hackensack's democracy

A badly battered section of Euclid Avenue in Hackensack remained untouched on Tuesday, above, even as at least one crew roams around the city, patching streets, such as Fairmount Avenue, below.

How you can you have democracy in Hackensack when only about 5% of the registered voters cast ballots in Tuesday's school board election, giving yet another victory to machine politics?

How can you have democracy in Hackensack when The Record makes no attempt to identify Lynne Hurwitz, chairwoman of the city's Democratic Party, as the power behind the winning slate, just as she propped up former Assemblyman and Police Chief Ken Zisa for so many years?

That support explains why employees of "Zisaville" felt comfortable driving city owned vehicles to the polls to vote on Tuesday. 

The city has about 20,000 registered voters, but Board of Education incumbent Francis W. Albolino was the highest vote-getter with 1,091.

He has been on the board since 1992.

Other winners

Elected with him were Lara L. Rodriguez and Timothy J. Hoffman, a 2012 graduate of Hackensack High School.

Rodriguez is a former associate director of marketing at Ramapo College, and Hoffman is a naive college student.

A marketing professional is just what the board needs to obscure all of its recent failures and how it is divided by politics.

Even though Hackensack doesn't have the huge expense of busing, the board apparently still cannot afford to serve students decent food or plant vegetable gardens at schools to fight the obesity epidemic.

Opponents meet


Albolino and one of his opponents, zoning board member Lawrence Eisen, chatted amiably on Tuesday in front of a polling place, Fairmount Elementary School, but their styles couldn't be more different.

Albolino wore a dark business suit, giving him the appearance of a slick politician.

Eisen was dressed casually, wore sandals and drove to the school in an old Saab. 

Now, he has a sob story for his supporters about how he was defeated by the city's legion of apathetic voters.

Gottlieb bombs

Readers have the same reaction to today's front page -- filled with coverage of the marathon bombing in Boston -- as they did to A-1 on Tuesday.

After watching hours of blanket coverage on TV, they have had enough, and want to read something else.

Gottlieb sent Mike Kelly's tired ass to Boston, and the columnist unloaded his arsenal of hackneyed words and phrases on readers on A-1 today.

Here's yet another lead paragraph in which Kelly uses "gaze" or "gazing."

In his previous column, he trotted out, "Say hello to ...," the fifth time he has used the same trite phrase since July 2012, according to a Google search.

Staff Writer John Cichowski, another one of The Record's burned-out columnists, has more advice on how to report litterers, but stops short of telling readers they can go to the police with a license-plate number and have a summons issued to the owner of the car (L-1).