A sad night for Hoboken. The story needed to make clear that it was the Kids First majority that voted to, in effect, fire Ohaus and Hillenbrand. The five culprits that people need to remember are Markle, Minutillo, Sobolov, McAllister and Gold. To answer the question that everyone is asking--Minutillo and McAllister are up for reelection next year. Only 11 months to go before the voters can win some justice for Ohaus and Hillenbrand. These two will get much more justice when they win the lawsuits against the district that are surely coming. The big mystery is Sobolov. Paula says she's been to the parties at her house that have suddenly become so controversial under Toback. Her kids are in Hillenbrand's math program and Cheng-Yen said they have done very well. Paula even called out Sobolov last night, all but imploring her to do the right thing and save the theater program. Sobolov used to be St. Irene in this town. Now she's in the darkest corner of the dark side, killing excellent schools programs that her own kids are in, and all for no reason. Just another sad part of a sad night.

Deborah, you need to get over yourself. The parents (who appeared to be pretty cool and smart when they spoke out last night), as well as the kids, as well as alumni, as well as the Nederlander Organization, Paper Mill, Montclair, as well as the previous school administration, etc. etc. all support her.

What up, Deb? Googled you and it says you are a partner at Pitta & Giblin LLP. Ms. Hulbert has practiced as an attorney in the areas of employee benefits, employment and labor law for more than 20 years.

As an employment lawyer you don't see a problem with changing their contract after the April 30 deadline for non-renewing them had already passed?

I am disgusted, at this point, that any of my tax money goes to pay Outhouse's salary. Her sense of entitlement is beyond belief. If she wants to be a teacher in a public school systmen, then teach. If she wants to run a private theatre comapny, then leave. I am not paying for a private theater company operating in the school system when the acadmics are so miserable and the enrollment is declining. And please don't threaten about removing your kids from the school if she leaves. Go ahead and just do it already. I am sick of the elelction cycle crap that this asshat of a non tenured teacher pulls.

She's non-tenured, k? OMG! That's like the worst thing in the entire world, right? kids first phony irene used to lurve "outhouse".used to party with her kids at the "outhouse". now she jsut sits there and looks sick from stabbing paula in the back or maybe she is just craving some nicotine. phony irene used to give tours of the high school and praise paula up this side and down. my best guess is that ro markle sat on her and destroyed phony irene's backbone. if she ever had one.

A footnote to this fiasco--Toback did nothing last night to dispel the very strong suspicion among parents that the letters posted on Patch on Monday between Markle, Toback and union boss Enrico were backdated to April 19 and 20. That made it seem as though their agreement to push back the firing deadline to May 15 was done before the contractual deadline of April 30. Under questioning from board member Sullivan, Enrico said the discussions about switching the date began April 18 and Toback said the firing letters were all written and ready to go then. So why weren't they sent out then and (as is required) the board notified? There were still two weeks to the April 30 deadline. Why go to all the trouble of secret deals with the union and the dubious legality of changing a hard and fast deadline retroactively? When Sullivan brought this up, Toback looked so obviously busted it was embarrassing. He stammered something about the school break beginning April 22, but that still left four days (incl. the half day on the 21st). And of course he could've worked a day or two during the break, like many of us not on government schedules have to do. He also mumbled something wanting to wait for the outcome of the board elections on the 27th in case the budget got voted down. But he looked silly saying that. Budgets never go down here and by law the budget couldn't be cut anyway, and if you had to cut, you'd cut more people not fewer, so how would the budget affect this?

Toback also said something about being humane to the people being fired by not rushing this through (as through trumping up fake charges, maligning their reputations with bogus, made-to-order performance reviews, and ruining the programs they built is humane in Toback’s book). But Sullivan called him out on that, asking whether it’s humane to allow the April 30 deadline to come and go, giving them the impression that they had gotten tenure (under state law you automatically are renewed if you get no notice by the deadline), and then yank that renewal away on May 4. Toback, of course, had no answer. What probably happened is that Toback got back from vacation Monday, May 2, suddenly realized the Hoboken deadline was April 30 (in most districts it’s May 15), made a quick deal with Enrico and Markle, sent out the firing letters (Hillenbrand said she got hers May 4), notified the board (members said meetings were held May 3 & 4), backdated the letters to not look like a total idiot, and got the whole thing done in four days—the exact same number of days he had if he really had started dealing with this April 18, as he claims. Sobolov said she never heard about this switch in the dates until last week and there’s no way Kids First would’ve done something so big without clueing in their members. For all this we’re paying Toback $155,000 a year--and he had us sue to get $20,000 more just for the privilege of coming here and destroying our district.

pp

Thanks, pp. It's great to have esp, but I'm just repeating what she said at the meeting. No special knowledge.

On tenure, no I don't. But Paula doesn't have any of those issues. Read Toback's letter from last month. He raised a bunch of issues but all of them were refuted, easily explained or just plain wrong. There are no proven charges of her violating policies and not following directions. You're just smearing her by continuing to say that when you know all the charges have been debunked--not one charge stood up. Toback knows none of his original charges held up in the end so that's why he had to accuse her of calling DYFS on the hip hop mom. But that didn't hold up either (and even if she did call DYFS, so what? shouldn't she be commended for that if it were necessary?). So Toback has nothing. He just doesn't like her and that's a good enough reason to fire her and ruin the theater program?

Pied Piper, you are quite right, the focus should be on academic classroom objectives. Then please explain why why why Kids First fired the head of the Johns Hopkins U program. It is solely about academics for the kids who are top performers. I doubt that it's any fun at all, which should make you happy.

I get that they don't like Paula Ohaus, but what have they and Dr. Toback got against Ms. Hillenbrand, who from all accounts is a serious academic who has created a magnificent math program out of nothing. I haven't heard anything about sleepovers or charter school ruffians sneaking into the math lab.

But Ms. Hillenbrand had to go too? You do seem hepped up on policy. So what policy did the lady violate?

If you dare to complain about the management of the meeting, I suggest you take it up with Kids First. They knew exactly what they were getting by placing Ms. Markle at the helm for the third year running: Yelling, fighting, gavel banging, off putting body language, snottiness, aggressiveness, and a total lack of knowledge of meeting procedure.

If Dr. Toback was prepared to release these employees on April 19/20 why didn't he do it then. Why would he put the district in serious legal jeopardy by waiting to inform them until after April 30 when they thought they were already rehired for the following year? It was clear from the April 12 meeting that she humiliated him and she had to go. I would think he was preparing her exit papers first thing on April 13.

Please - stop withthe whining and the utter disutign dipslkay of immtyrity by adults. Peolpe have been lsoign their jobs reoutinely for the aspt three years. I am sure that polenty of peopel woudl have liked more advance ntoice. But that nicety hasnot been extended to the vast majority of people who have been "downsized". They have just sucked it up and dealt with thte situaiton. I can not think of any earthly reason why Outhouse would be kept as a teacher int eh school system after her latest "performance".

Hoboken in the news:

http://www.my9tv.com/dpp/my9_news/nj_videos/beloved-hoboken-teacher-on-the-chopping-block

k, please stop with the fat thumbs. we get it. you're an angry stay at home mom who doesn't get the respect she thinks she deserves even with a business degree from somewhere like penn state or udelaware. you've got a crackberry and a lot of time on your hands. like pp, the angry tenured teacher who thinks pledging allegiance to those kf phonies is more important than educating children, you resent that women like hillenbrand and ohaus have real jobs and are successful.

talk about whining. how about that kf idiot ruth mcallister? we are still mocking her stupid comparison last month of her father the physics teacher and her mother the rocket scientist and her sister the teacher and her other sister the teacher and her other sister the teacher and her other sister the teacher and her other sister the teacher who would never have a sleepover (you have to do the imitation with a really nasally whiney voice.) as if someone would want to have a sleepover with them!

she's another phony and so are those other board people markel and sobolov and minutillo who hang around the high school all the time spying on paula. you can't walk in the front door without tripping over one of them in their sad mom jeans. they don't have jobs so they rag on successful women who do it all, work and children. markel's son graduated 2 years ago but she won't leave. get a life lady. you suck up all the air.

Markel still hanging with Judy Burrell?

Yep. It was Judy who started this whole thing. She's always been jealous of Paula because Paula won lots of awards, was great at her job and the kids loved her. Judy's track teams go nowhere. So she put the bug in Markle's ear and Markle and her flunky Minutillo put the bug in Carter's and Rusak's ear and it was a done deal by the time Toback got here. For a football player Toback is proving quite a wimp. Rusak is your classic bully. He made sure Carter always got in line and Toback is utterly intimidated. If Toback were a man he would've bid Rusak farewell the day he started. What good manager keeps his interim predecessor around for more than a day, looking over his shoulder, second-guessing everything? Doesn't Toback know anything about running an organization??? So we have two bullies calling all the shots for the schools--Markle, who makes sure the Kids First "reformers" never reform anything, and Ruzak, who may be even a bigger hack. He couldn't even remember to tell Toback the right date for firing people. He thinks you can put unsigned, unseen evaluations into a personnel file, and pretend that the teacher knew all about them. He claims a teacher was told to get a certification but doesn't put it in writing and doesn't make it clear to the teacher. This guy wouldn't last two minutes in the real world--and we're paying him $250,000 to $300,000--his completely undeserved salary and his completely undeserved pension, just so he can fire our best people.

last chance to see an amazing PAULA OHAUS production at hoboken high before toback and kids first (right, like that name fits them) puts the last nail in her coffin. Alice in Wonderland is friday and saturday at 7:30 and sunday at 2. it's kids frrom all the schools, not just hoboken high.

sign this petition to show your support http://www.petitiononline.com/zab26274/petition.html

many brave teachers have signed this petition, even Rachel Grygiel who patch just did a story about her award at Princeton university for being one of the best teachers in NJ. it takes one to know one, right?

this last poster leaves out Walter Rusak in the hall of shame of villains in this terrible episode. he, along with Rose Markle and Theresa Minutillo, is the evil genius behind this vengeful effort to rip the soul out of our high school. Toback, so famous for his gullibility that people call him Mr. Turnip Truck now, is just the useful idiot, completely dominated and used by Rusak and Markle. Like all classic bullies, Rusak gets a disturbing amount of joy out of pushing people around -- people who are far smarter and more accomplished than he is but who care about power far less than he does and so are at a disadvantage against him. he's a sandbox dictator, a hack who could never make it in the real world so he lords it over the schoolchildren and young female teachers of the pretend world of public schools. and for doing so much destruction to our schools in his two years here -- don't forget, he's also booting out Cheng-Yen Hillenbrand, who built for Hoboken the largest Johns Hopkins program in the country -- we, the taxpayers, are shoveling mountains of money at him--at least $250,000 a year between his bloated salary and his bloated and undeserved pension. And last year he bullied Kids First into giving him raise! When people ask why public schools are awful across the country, people like Walter Rusak are the only answer you need.

REPOST: seezall 1:15pm on Wednesday, June 15, 2011
i thought it was a firing offense to let a student ride in a car driven by a teacher? that's one of the big crimes that toback and rusak had on paula ohaus, right?
but i guess it's ok when one of the coaches does it? this was in the sat. hoboken reporter story on buddy mathews...
"Matthews relayed a conversation he had recently with star pitcher Kenny Roder, as he was driving in his car with Roder."
What if they are broadsided by another car? that's not my questions, that's what jean marie mitchell wrote here on patch as she was attacking paula.
and let's not forget greg bond's vicious attack letter against paula... A teacher should not drive students around in their car. A teacher may disagree, but this is how teachers should conduct themselves today. A teacher may view this as interfering with their ability to establish supportive relationships with their students. But these guidelines ultimately exist to protect the students, and teachers, from uncontrolled situations. Any parent whose child was injured in an uncontrolled situation with a teacher would demand that all the parties involved take responsibility: the teacher, the School Board, the Superintendent of Schools, the School District and the State. When a parent's child is injured, it doesn't matter that a teacher was well intentioned. What matters is that the child was injured. kids first proving once again how phoney they are.