SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD, NJ — As we head into February, the 2019 SOMA Board of Education is all set up and ready to go. On Jan. 3, new members were sworn in and board leaders were chosen, and on Jan. 28, board members were assigned to committees.
At the Jan. 3 reorganization, the business administrator and board secretary swore in Shannon Cuttle and Javier Farfan to their first terms on the board, and Annemarie Maini to her second term on the board. Farfan, Cuttle and Maini won election to the BOE last November when they received more votes than the other five candidates running.
It was a big night for Maini, who, in addition to being sworn in, was elected as board president with a unanimous vote of 8-0 — BOE member Anthony Mazzocchi was absent. Also with unanimous votes, Susie Adamson was appointed first vice president and Mazzocchi was appointed second vice president.
Typically, board members would be assigned to the board’s committees at this reorganization meeting, but this year the BOE held off until after a BOE retreat Jan. 8. According to Maini, following the board retreat, the board members gave their first and second choices for committee assignments; each board member did then get assigned to either the first or second committee of their choice. Each board member will serve on one committee.
The committee slate was unanimously approved. The Finance Committee will include Chairman Mazzocchi, Adamson and Johanna Wright; the Curriculum and Instruction Committee will include Chairwoman Stephanie Lawson-Muhammad, Cuttle and Robin Johnson Baker; and the Personnel Committee will include Chairwoman Elizabeth Baker, Farfan and Maini.
“In the meeting we also reviewed the board goal of aligning our board committees to the QSAC indicators so that the work in committee will be using the monitoring reports to evaluate our progress against these indicators,” Maini told the News-Record of the Jan. 28 meeting.
Photos Courtesy of Shannon Cuttle, Javier Farfan and Annemarie Maini
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