The Jersey City Education Association is running two new candidates with Trustee Natalia Ioffe in the local board of education’s seven-person non-partisan race on November 5th.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
Ioffe, first elected as part of the JCEA-backed “Education Matters” slate in 2021, is now running alongside Ahmed Kheir, a system integration specialist at MQLAB according to his LinkedIn page and a parent of six, and attorney Melany Cruz Burgos.
They are both first time candidates for office.
“Melany served as a student rep. on the Perth Amboy BOE. She attended Rutgers University & pursued her joint J.D. and Masters in Bioethics at Duke University School of Law. As an attorney Melany has counseled disadvantaged individuals with their immigration and criminal justice matters as well as sophisticated companies with their financial restructuring needs,” the Education Matters social media pages posted.
“She currently oversees more than sixty attorneys and is responsible for maintaining their training and professional development. Outside of work, Melany is actively involved with local organizations focused on civic engagement, women empowerment and uplifting the community.”
JCEA 3rd Vice President Mike Greco, who is also the Education Matters campaign manager, said that all candidates who have filed will be sent a questionnaire to give them the opportunity to be screened by the JCEA PAC for an endorsement.
While Ioffe began the year as the BOE president, getting appointed at their annual reorganization meeting on January 5th, the politics of the board began to get quite brutal shortly thereafter.
At the end of February, Trustee Dejon Morris, who was just sworn in the month prior after another Education Matters sweep in November, was named the president and Trustee Younass Barkouch the vice president at a raucous meeting.
While this led Superintendent of Schools Dr. Norma Fernandez to ask the New Jersey Department of Education (NJ DOE) to provide a fiscal monitor after the “coup,” the state ultimately didn’t get involved and another vote went in Morris and Barkouch’s favor in March (though Barkouch got replaced the following week).
He and Trustee Paula Jones-Watson, who ran with Ioffe in 2021, will not be seeking re-election.
With that in mind, there will be a full slate running against the Education Matters team consisting of “Sam” Sumit Salia, who ran by himself last year, Tia Rezabala, a teacher at the Essex County Schools of Technology, and Matthew Schneider, the owner and director of the Resolution Counseling Center, his LinkedIn page says.
For the moment, the sole independent candidate is Gopanand SrinivasaRao, another first time candidate who works as a Quartz Core Strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
All seven candidates are pursuing three, three-year terms on the volunteer nine-person school board, with petitions able to be cured until Thursday across the county, according to Hudson County Clerk’s Office Supervisor of Elections Amber Vargas.
Also of note, former BOE President Gerald Lyons, who successfully ran on the Education Matters slate in 2014 and 2019, is running for a three-year term in Secaucus along with Tatiana Geller as the “Excellence in Education” team in a six-person race.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with a comment from JCEA 3rd Vice Chair/Education Matters campaign manager Mike Greco.
