We're back!

Madness at the BOE, your Feral of the Week, and some avian love too.

It’s spring, and if you live in West Side, the roses are going absolutely bonkers. (Thank you to Kayt Hester for this gorgeous rose pic.)

Along the theme of new growth, we’re back for the third resurrection of Neighborhood Character. This is more of a collective effort, with more input from neighborhood characters across Jersey City. We’re still finding our feet and our voice, but hope you’ll join us as we begin a new chapter.

Avangers, Assemble!

The Board of Education continues to cover itself with glory in the eyes of Jersey City, and, thanks to some breathtakingly poor decision-making, the national media. The arrest of parent advocate Emily Pecot at the May 21st BOE meeting stunned pretty much everyone. Ms. Pecot is one of a large group of increasingly frustrated parents who have been seeking some oversight from both the district and the BOE in regards to how special education is being handled in Jersey City.

First, here’s what happened: after a heated exchange between parent advocates and the BOE, the trustees broke for a 20-minute recess. After they returned, two cops approached Ms. Pecot, who was sitting by herself. The officers asked her to leave, she declined and was arrested. She’s been charged with defiant trespass.

News of this quickly spread on social media and the few remaining news outlets covering JC. Ward E Councilwoman Eleana Little sent two letters to BOE President Noemi Velazquez, reminding her that while nobody likes being yelled at by constituents, that’s essentially part of the job of being an elected official. Velazquez’s response was really quite something. “At this time I will NOT release the passion merited by your uniformed one sided view, lack of political experience and avanging (sic) syndrome.”

If you want to read the rest of it, it’s been covered pretty extensively by Hudson County View. One thing is clear: BOE Vice President Dejon Morris and Velazquez tried to stay right on the safe side of lying and failed, with Morris saying he did not order the arrest of Ms. Pecot. His name is on the police report.

Getting lost in all of this is what the parents who have been repeatedly showing up to these BOE meetings are actually asking for. Many of these parents have children who are enrolled in Jersey City public schools and need special education.

About 15% of students enrolled in Jersey City’s public school system are classified as students with disabilities. While that may seem like a lot, it’s actually below the state average of around 17% — but there are probably something around 3,900 students who are classified as having a disability that requires an Individualized Education Program (IEP).

These can range from a medical accommodation — being able to take insulin or time meals for diabetes — to interventions to address stuttering, learning disabilities, to accommodations for autism, OCD, or anxiety. The point is it covers a lot, and some of these IEPs are resource-hungry; they require additional classroom aides or specific classrooms.

In 2022, parents approached the BOE asking for a program audit. They wanted to know if their kids were getting the services their IEPs required. In 2023, the BOE approved a financial audit (not exactly the same thing), and hired a firm to conduct it.

“We were never given a timeline,” said Sylvia Goulart, a parent of a child who receives special education. “This was something that we had specifically requested, and we were just told that they didn’t know when it would be done. Which seems unrealistic to me — do you ever hire someone to do a job and don’t give them a due date?"

Well, the audit only took about a year. It was completed in September of 2024, and the findings were damming: the JCPS special education department had been authorizing payments to out-of-district schools, as well as vendors, in amounts higher than they should have been paying, and paying for services without confirming enrollment for the services.

So naturally the BOE sprang into action, investigating internal processes that led to the mismanagement of funds: lol, no.

They sat on the report for a year, and in that year Superintendent Norma Fernandez recommended that Acting Deputy Superintendent Gerard Crisonino, who oversaw the special education department, get a $16,368 raise — along with five other administrators. Former acting business administrator, Dennis Frohnapfel, described the push for Crisonino’s raise as “disproportionate, extreme, ludicrous, preposterous, absurd, outrageous, bizarre, unreasonable, nonsensical,” in a memo to the BOE — two days before he quit the job. When the report of the audit was FINALLY made public in August of 2025, Crisonino was fired and physically escorted from the building.

“That’s when we were told that the audit wasn’t actually complete,” Goulart said. “That’s only the first part. They didn’t tell us when the second part of the audit would come out, but considering that they had the first one for a year before making it public, we really want the second part.”

Now, with that in mind, the fact that these parents have been repeatedly showing up to BOE meetings and requesting accountability, transparency, and more involvement in how these programs are delivered, their frustration and anger makes a lot more sense.

The parents are asking for four main things: they want the rest of the audit released, they want the program audit they originally asked for back in 2023, they want a national search for a qualified special education director, and they want meaningful parental involvement in every step of the process.

These are reasonable demands and they have the added consequence of being required by state law. Any parents reading this know how hard it is to bring up kids in the best of circumstances. Now imagine a school system that not only fails to provide your child its legally required education, but then has you arrested for demanding better. And let’s not forget how much the Jersey City Board of Education was responsible for the 40 percent tax hike we’ve all floated for the past five years.

The asks are also not particularly unusual — districts should do program audits to see if they’re working. The stats for special ed in JC are not great: only 14.2% special education students are graduation-ready in English and language and only 1.4% in math. You would think the district would want to know why.

What they have gotten instead is an overt stifling of their voices. Public comment allowances went from three minutes to one minute.

“They’re allowed to hold forth for ten minutes in response to an issue,” Goulart said. “We do at times speak aggressively. That’s true. We do raise our voices. But we’ve only started to raise our voices after years of trying to be polite. And they only seemed to respond to escalation. But at no point did anyone ever threaten anyone.”

“We’ve been lectured about how we’re conducting ourselves,” Goulart continued. “We were told by trustee Muhammad, ‘showing up and raising your voices isn’t advocacy.’ Well, I think they’re confusing advocacy with diplomacy. But we’d be more diplomatic if we felt that we were being taken seriously. We’re advocating for children who cannot advocate for themselves.”

The most insidious thing about this is the equation of demanding change with threatening violence. Superintendent Fernandez said in a letter sent to the schools and parents, “Board meetings are, and must remain, a safe space. While passion and disagreement are natural parts of advocacy, we must maintain a respectful environment so that all voices can be heard and the essential business of governing our district can take place.”

The only person who was actually threatened at a BOE meeting was Emily Pecot, in response to shouting at a trustee. In an article in the JC Times, Dejon Morris said of Ms. Pecot’s arrest, “Remember, if I have a gun and I shoot you and I go and sit down and I’m calm, the act still happened.”

But Pecot didn’t have a gun, she had an attitude — and apparently that was too much the BOE to handle.

A safe space is not necessarily a quiet space. It’s not a space where only agreement is allowed. And no board member elected by the people of Jersey City should feel “safe” in that job unless they answer to those people. The safety of children who need a decent education, who have additional challenges is a hell of a lot more important than people like Dejon Morris feeling safe dismissing parent concerns.

And being challenged, even shouted at, by frustrated constituents is not threatening behavior — until you say it is and point a cop at a person. Being uncomfortable is not the same thing as being unsafe.

This is not over. There will be a special education town hall held on June 9th — location TBD —where members of the public can speak.

“We would really like it if more people showed up to these meetings,” Goulart said. “The BOE kind of knows us all because we show up at every meeting and they feel they can ignore us. But if more people get involved, that can only help.”

Avangers, assemble!

Feral of the Week

Here is handsome “Daiquiri,” having a lounge on his favorite patio furniture cover in recent mild weather. Daiquiri plus two buddies were TNR’d in a backyard in Journal Square over the winter.

Daiquiri’s pic comes courtesy of Feral Fixers TNR Club: a wonderful 501(c)3 nonprofit supporting Jersey City neighborhood street cats through spay/neuter, vaccinations, and medication care/rehabilitation. @feralfixersclub on instagram

Bird Corner

Yes, feral cats are awesome and deservedly beloved, but there are all kinds of creatures out there on (and above, and under) our streets. With that in mind, we invited Rachel Emmet, an organizer with Feminist Bird Club JC, to contribute what we hope is the first in a regular series.

On an early spring morning in 2024, I passed an office building near Journal Square and saw a vibrant flash of yellow laying still on the pavement. It was true Yellow with a capital Y. Not “gold” or “butter”, but the pure, brilliant primary yellow of a child’s crayon. The bird identification app Merlin told me I’d found a ‘Canada Warbler’.

I logged it into our collision monitoring records, where we collect data on birds that are victims of window collisions in Jersey City: Canada warbler, deceased. I’d seen this bird mentioned in field guide lists of warblers, a group of small migratory birds native to the Americas, but had never seen one in the wild. It hadn’t even been on my mental list of birds I especially hoped to see; there are many small, yellowish birds in the world. But looking at it up close, it had SO much character.

The warbler had bright white circle ‘spectacles’ around its big dark eyes, an intricate black ‘necklace’ on its chest, black undereye, and a dramatic widow’s peak. Over its cartoonishly bright yellow chest, it was wearing a rather serious gray business suit. It had tiny pink feet. I was struck by the tragedy of its passing—what a cute and unique little bird!

Canada warblers are named after (big surprise) Canada, where they breed in vast boreal forests. Yet they could just as easily be called Appalachian warblers, as they breed there, too. Or New England warblers, as they also make nests in scattered regions across New England.

Despite nesting and being born in those places, they actually spend little time there. They are one of the last birds to arrive in spring, typically in late May, and one of the first to depart in August. They then fly across the continental US, the Caribbean, past much of Central America, and live most of the year in the mountains of Costa Rica, Panama, or the great Andes Mountains of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. This tiny bird is enjoyed by people from many different countries, speaking different languages, at different times of the year.

Jersey City is part of their story, too. Although they only pass through a few weeks of the year, I hope they find safe passage here. Since the day I found one, I’ve made a point to seek them out during their biannual visits. I’ve observed them hopping in trees at Reservoir No. 3 and Lincoln Park West, taking a little rest in our city on its epic journey.

This spring, volunteer Cat Perry found one in the same location. It was still alive but concussed, its wings drooping, and it was rushed to the Wild Bird Fund in NYC. I asked Cat if she had ever seen one before. Like me, she hadn’t known what she’d found. She didn’t know this bird passed through Jersey City each year. Didn’t know how far it had come. Not until she picked one up with empathy and concern, in the same time and place I had, two years prior.

I wish more of us knew about this bird. Perhaps we would do more to join our neighbors across borders, far north and south, to ensure its survival, together. A few days after it was found, a rehabber at Wild Bird Fund posted a video of it with some other recovering warblers, and you can see our friend staring alertly into the camera, happily crunching on a mealworm. It rested up, and it healed. This year, we got to log it differently: Canada warbler, released.

Delaney Hall
The violence against protesters at Delaney Hall — who have come out to support the detainees, many of whom are participating in a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions — is horrifying and under-reported by the media.
If you want to support the detainees and their families, here are a few links:
SOMA Mutual Aid
SOMA Commissary Fund
Food4NJ

What’s Ahead

We have more stories in the pipeline, and we are working out a regular posting cadence that fits everyone’s schedules. We plan to begin posting weekly, although maybe not on Sunday mornings.

Be a Character!

If you have a story, a story idea, or would like to submit a feral cat (or any other feral) of the week, email us at neighborhoodcharacter@gmail.com