The Bergen Record/1931/Politics In School Board Election Hit

Politics In School Board Election Hit.

Taxpayer Condemns Politicians for Their Stand.

Grover C. Lindauer of Queen Anne Road, Teaneck, in a letter to the Bergen Evening Record today condemns the interest and political partisanry evidenced in the present campaign to elect new members of the school board on the part of township organization. Lindauer criticizes the joint civic committee for being partisan on the question and also strikes at the Teaneck Republican Association for allowing the political angle to affect the elections to the board by supporting candidates. Lindauer's letter follows: "I have read with mingled emotion and interest in your columns in recent weeks, reports of meetings in Teaneck of such bodies as that self constituted and apparently self-perpetuating body called the joint committee, having to do mainly with endorsement of certain candidates for election to the board of education at the forthcoming election February 10, and what has impressed me has been the outstanding interest, the local Republican partisan organization appears to be taking in these so-called civic activities, especially of several of the Republican Association's leading members who were members of the now defunct, partisan political township committee. "I cannot look upon such interest as being other than significant and evidencing a political interest in acquiring partisan representation on our school board: such as cannot bode any good for the interests of the community. The board of education, the one body in any community which should be distinctly and absolutely free of any partisan complexion, if dominated or to any measurable degree influenced by such partisan political principles and policies as have proved so costly to the taxpayers through its municipal government of the past, can only mean the gradual and complete wrecking of an educational system." "We of Teaneck, with examples lurid results of partisan administrations of the past still so fresh in our minds, and still evidenced on the debit side of our accounts, can ill afford to risk such a menace as its indicated in this partisan interest and association as well is parent backing of our present school board's expensive construction policies." "We have recently turned out a partisan form of municipal government and installed a non-partisan one of such merit and with such satisfactory results to date, that our faith in establishing it seems to lie and realty is confirmed and justified. We do not now want to take any chance of the good which has already been accomplished being lost or overcome through permitting partisan politics and influences to ingratiate themselves into our school board. In fact we should eliminate some of that which appears already lo have crept into that body. We have too much at stake, and too much harm to the community can result through any neglect of the significance attached to manifestations of partisan interest referred to." "It behooves the taxpayers to interest themselves in this matter, to give thought to the situation which confronts them: and act in a manner as will avoid any possibility of partisan element obtaining a stranglehold on the body of our government which has so much to do with the welfare, well-being and education of our children".