Somerset County’s Board of Education has been in the news since January 2025 when the new Board members took their oath of office and stepped into the chaos of administrative incompetence. The proof for this fact rests in the chaos we saw in every public board meeting, which included no working procedures to enforce any of the Board policies, obstruction to complete the 2025/26 school budget when the superintendent tried to deny the Board of their budget, and the public display of dysfunction to complete the SEA labor negotiations.
The radical activists allegedly led by Dr. Tasker-Mitchell had tried and failed every which way to obstruct the Board’s mission, and even went as far as trying to remove Chairman Lankford from the Board.
The Board adopted its budget during the June budget session as presented to the public. The budget only included funding for 6 vice principals, since there are only 7 schools and a technical center in Somerset County.
Today, Somerset County has about 11 Vice Principals.
But how can this happen if the allocations of an approved budget cannot be exceeded?
As it turned out, Chairman Lankford’s relentless pursuit for the truth in financial management was right after all.
The financial audit exposed the reckless financial management of the superintendent and her failed leadership.
Social media posts by the prior Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Johnson shifted the blame of failure to the OLA (legislative audit), but the public session at the October 21, 2025 Board meeting exposed the truth. Both the superintendent and Chairman Lankford were not discussing the legislative audit on the meeting agenda, but the regular annual financial audit for Fiscal Year 2025 that was completed by the independent auditors at UHY.
To avoid accountability for the past school year (for which the UHY audit specifically covered), the superintendent then ambiguously pivoted to the legislative audit covering the past decade, in attempt to distract from the financial activity during her term.
Good riddance! Hopefully the board has learned a lesson and will now hire a qualified non DEI person for the position of superintendent. Let’s get back to hiring people because they are the best person for the job and for no other reason whatsoever.
She was nothing but an incompetent Marxist. Those that disagree with her termination really have no idea of the things that she did. There was more than enough evidence to have her removed and not even the abusive state that went to extensive lengths to interfere and force her stay couldn’t even save her from her own disastrously-ignorant conduct.