AFT New Jersey President Jennifer S. Higgins joined Perth Amboy Federation leadership Jan. 22 to speak during the Perth Amboy Board of Education meeting about the recently released state audit of Perth Amboy Public Schools.
The audit, spanning July 2021 through June 2025, revealed a deficit of $13,040,742, along with other examples of gross financial mismanagement.
After a lengthy statement about the audit read by board attorney Isabel Machado, during which she emphatically said multiple times “there is no deficit,” and a follow-up presentation from board secretary Michael LoBrace, Perth Amboy Federation President Pat Paradiso opened up the public participation segment.
The release of the audit, Paradiso said, reminded her that since May 2024, there have been numerous layoffs in the district, cuts to busing and a lack of classroom supplies. She also pointed out that Perth Amboy Superintendent David A. Roman and other administrators have received sizable salary increases.
Meanwhile, the Perth Amboy Federation and the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association were “blamed” for negotiating salary increases, Paradiso said, adding that all of those increases “should have been budgeted for as they are every other time a contract is settled.”
“Our staff demands a full forensic audit now,” Paradiso said in closing.
PAF/AFT Local 857 district representative Josiah Santamaria followed, noting that the consensus among the staff he’s spoken with over the past month is that they believe the state auditor. Santamaria described the district’s response to the audit as “a half-hearted attempt to deflect and shift blame away from the current administration. It’s full of financial platitudes and jargon that provide no real substance.”
After introducing herself and expressing her support for the Perth Amboy Federation, Higgins said, “I think what we have here is not just a budgeting problem. It’s a failure of leadership and accountability.”
She continued, “This body, and the ones that preceded it, have a legal fiduciary responsibility to ensure that the district is spending public tax dollars it receives not just wisely, but properly. The state auditor’s report repeatedly discusses numerous examples of a failure to retain proper documentation of expenses, including proper approval processes.
“We expect, and the Perth Amboy students and their families deserve, a strong public response to these findings. … We urge the board of education to conduct a forensic audit to go deeper than what the state has already done to determine what happened, how it happened and how to prevent it from happening in the future.”
ABOVE: AFTNJ President Jennifer S. Higgins with Perth Amboy Federation’s Pat Paradiso, Josiah Santamaria and Leslie Velez prior to the start of the Perth Amboy Board of Education meeting Jan. 22 at Perth Amboy High School. (Photo by Chris M. Junior)
