Rift distracts school board

Investigation inadequate, board member says

WANTAGE — The High Point school board has recently lost track of its main objectives, board president Walter Stumpf Jr. said. “If we could get back on track, that would be great,” he said by phone Tuesday.

But there's an issue that has been preventing board members from focusing on its objectives. And it has divided them since November. That's when a student alleged that District Superintendent Dr. John Hannum, while nude, struck up a locker room conversation with him at Minerals Resort and Spa in Vernon. The student was working at the spa as a lifeguard.

Since then, the school reported the allegation to the NJ State Police. The police and the board of education have conducted their own individual investigations of the incident. The police issued a report that found no criminal conduct and, according to Stumpf the board report also cleared Hannum from any wrongdoing. At this point, said Stumpf, there is “nothing else the board can do.”

And he doesn't think anything else needs to be done.

Stumpf thinks that at least one member of the board wants to use this issue as a wedge to remove the superintendent, and him, from their positions.

Difference of opinion
At least one board member balks at the board dropping the issue with Hannum. Wantage resident Paul Derin filed an ethics complaint against his board president in January. Derin claims that he would have liked the board of education's investigation to have been conducted "under the full board, not under Stumpf alone.” He explained this during a telephone conversation Tuesday.

Derin believes that Stumpf's "friendship with Superintendent Hannum has warped his ability to make ethical decisions.” Derin cited a recent article in another newspaper that referenced this friendship as proof of his claim.

But Stumpf says that article was full of “misquotes and inaccuracies,” including the part about his alleged friendship with Hannum, which he says, makes Derin's claim unreliable.

What's behind it?
Stumpf believes Derin's allegations arise from a “personal agenda.” The first part of this agenda, Stumpf claims, “is to get rid of the superintendent.”

“The second thing on (his) agenda is to get rid of me.”

Stumpf claims that all this is doing nothing but “taking so much time and money away from the number one priority of the board, which is the students.”

Derin said on Tuesday by phone that he has no designs against Hannum or Stumpf, adding that his only “agenda is to do what's proper ethically and morally for the children at High Point.” He further clarified the complaint he filed against Stumpf in January: “I am not looking to get rid of Mr. Stumpf, I'm just asking he step down as president.” All but one of the charges in Derin's ethics complaint will be heard by an administrative law judge next year.

The one thing that these two can agree on, Derin says, is that the issue is “taking time away from academics.”

Superintendent Hannum's office was contacted for comment, but didn't return the call before press time.

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