NJ Education Report

Yesterday news came that Lizette Delgado-Polanco resigned from her government job.

There’s news today too: So did her husband. Two sources told me that Enohel Polcanco-Gonzalez “magically disappeared” from his position at the state Department of Education.

To back up, Delgado-Polanco was appointed by her close ally Governor Phil Murphy as head of the state Schools Development Authority, which is in charge of building school facilities in Abbott districts but is broke now after going through $12 billion. According to The Observer, she inflated her credentials at an Assembly hearing and “allegedly fired longtime employees and replaced them with about three dozen friends, family and business associates, many of whom were placed in jobs paying more than $100,000 annually and some of whom did not have the required qualifications for the positions.

As we’ve seen before, that same culture of nepotism and patronage pervades the Department of Education. Example: Commissioner LamontRepollet’s hiring of former Passaic Councilman Marcellus Jackson as a Special Assistant in the DOE Office of Civic and Social Engagement for $70,000 a year, even though Jackson was “prohibited from state employment because he had been convicted of public corruption.” 

We don’t know that much about Delgado-Polanco’s husband. An Open Public Records request lists his position as “Gov’t Rep 2″ (which just means he’s not represented by a union), that he earns a salary of $95,000, and that he has worked at the DOE (at the time of the OPRA request) for four months.

And, I suppose, Commissioner Lamont Repollet had to approve his appointment. Or someone high up in the DOE.

What’s his field of expertise? Gotta be something in education, right? Nope. Polanco-Gonzalez is a former minor league baseball coach and infielder. That must make him supremely qualified for his gig at the DOE’s Office of Civic and Social Engagement where, according to The Record, “he works with community and faith groups, maintains a database of organizations and helps with department programming.”

Pretty sweet gig. Then again, his wife made $225,000. So that’s $320,000 for the two of them plus benefits, neither of whom have experience in their respective departments.

And we wonder why our taxes are so high.