The Jersey City Education Association will likely be the only entity backing a three-person slate in the upcoming local board of education race, where 10 candidates are seeking three, three-year terms.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
Incumbents Mussab Ali and Marilyn Roman, as well as first time candidate Joan Terrell-Paige, are running as the “Education Matters” ticket.
In recent years, this has been the slogan of the JCEA ticket, but union sources say nothing is official yet.
Ali was elected to a one-year term last November, becoming the first Muslim American elected official in Jersey City history, after a failed bid in 2016.
Meanwhile, Roman was re-elected to another three-year term in November 2015. Hudson County View reported last month that Ali and Roman would again be running with the backing of the local teachers union.
Some of those joining them on the ballot are Trustee Vidya Gangadin, who ran with Roman in 2015 and is now running independently, Natalia Ioffe, Asmaa Abdalla and John Hanussak.
Ioffie and Abdalla were on the ballot in 2016, while Hanussak unsuccessfully sought the Ward C council seat on Mayor Steven Fulop’s ticket back in November.
Youssef Saleh, who scored 9,433 votes last year in an unsuccessful bid as an independent, is also back to give it another go.
Rounding out the candidates are political neophytes Neil Abadie and Dominique Smith, the latter who is an admissions counselor at New Jersey City University.
