A parent advocate is urging voters to remove school board President Maria Carvalho, reopening scrutiny of a political money network that supported her rise and was operated by a consultant now serving 24 years in prison for arranging a brutal murder.
Christina Cunha-Moreira, president of Elizabeth Parents and Students Care, is calling on residents to examine the connections between school district contractors, outside campaign spending and the elected officials who approve public contracts.
Her message ahead of the Nov. 3 election: Follow the money, demand answers and vote for change.
“It’s about a system where the money is hidden and the voters are the last to know,” Cunha-Moreira said in a “Coffee with Chris” video endorsing challenger Maria Lorenz.
A dental hygienist, parent, and community advocate, Cunha-Moreira initially founded her organization as a Facebook forum for Elizabeth families. She has challenged district officials over school conditions, overcrowding and services for children with disabilities.
Now she is drawing attention to the political machinery behind the board — particularly the involvement of Sean Caddle, whose campaign organizations promoted candidates backed by Mayor J. Christian Bollwage.
Carvalho first won election in 2014 with support from the Committee for Economic Growth and Social Justice, a super PAC associated with former state Sen. Raymond Lesniak and operated by Caddle.
The organization backed Bollwage-supported school board candidates and routed substantial spending through Caddle’s consulting firm, Arkady LLC, during the same year that Caddle arranged the killing of former associate Michael Galdieri.
Federal prosecutors said hired killers stabbed Galdieri to death in his Jersey City apartment and set it ablaze. Caddle pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder for hire in January 2022 and was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison in June 2023.
Cunha-Moreira explicitly said she was not alleging that Carvalho or other members of the mayor-backed slate knew about the murder. Her demand concerns political accountability: who financed the campaigns, who handled the money and whose interests those campaigns served.
The contractor connections are documented beyond her video.
A 2022 Public Citizen report, citing emails obtained by POLITICO, described how an Elizabeth school board attorney collected contributions from at least five district law firms, including his own, and forwarded them to a Caddle-linked nonprofit.
That organization, National Progressive Organization, passed most of the contributions to A Better Elizabeth, a super PAC that financed campaign material supporting school board candidates backed by the city’s Democratic leadership.
In the month after emails describing the contributions were written, the board authorized more than $100,000 in payments to contributing firms, Public Citizen reported.
For Cunha-Moreira, the arrangement raises a fundamental question: Are school board elections serving families, or the contractors seeking business from the officials they help elect?
The contributions and contracts do not, by themselves, establish an illegal exchange. But they expose the overlap between private political financing and public spending that she wants voters to confront.
Her anger also stems from what she describes as dismissive treatment of residents who question district leadership.
In a Sept. 18 Facebook post, Cunha-Moreira said Carvalho cut her off during public comment and told her, “You’re not a parent of a student in this district.”
Cunha-Moreira said she had appeared on behalf of parents, employees and community members. She argued that where her child attends school has no bearing on her standing as a taxpayer or her advocacy for district families.
“This is about how elected officials treat members of the public who show up, ask questions and demand accountability,” she wrote.
Her account of the exchange has not been independently verified for this article.
Carvalho, Jerry Jacobs and Rosa Moreno Ortega are listed on the county’s published candidate roster under “Moving Education Forward.” Lorenz is listed under “Advocate for Change.” Voters will choose three board members from four candidates. Cunha-Moreira, who said she ran in 2016 and 2017, is not among the listed candidates this year.
Her appeal is for residents to turn their frustration into votes — and to insist that the people controlling school spending answer to the families whose children depend on it.
“Families in this city deserve to know,” she said.
