The Hardyston Township Board of Education kicked off budget season on January 20, 2026. It was a long workshop with tough conversations about rising costs, staffing needs, facility repairs, and uncertainty around state aid.
During that meeting, Board Member Donna Carey was visibly on her phone at several points. Afterward, an OPRA request was filed for any district-accessible communications or images connected to those moments.
To be clear, this isn’t about anyone’s private life. It’s about how elected officials conduct themselves in a public meeting while discussing decisions that affect students, staff, and taxpayers.
What was being discussed during those phone-use windows
We filed an OPRA to find out what was more important to Donna than what was being discussed during these important district conversations. The OPRA request lists specific timestamps from the meeting video. Those windows lined up with core budget topics, including:
- 7:10 - 7:38: District goals and priorities tied to budget planning
- 8:55: Curriculum and intervention overview (K-8 programming)
- 14:12: Facilities and operational projects (security systems, transportation savings, building needs)
- 17:02 - 20:49: Local tax levy, state-aid history, and operating-budget context
- 25:00 / 26:17: Tax-levy cap illustration and early projection assumptions (including flat state aid and grant uncertainty)
- 35:12 - 38:57: Staffing and student-support needs (including behavioral support capacity)
- 39:47 - 44:15: Board discussion on status-quo budgeting, cost increases, and transfer accuracy
- 1:07:20 - 1:15:16: Preschool-aid mechanics and budget-allocation constraints
Whatever your political view is, these weren’t throwaway moments. This was the heart of the district’s budget discussion. Donna was distracted.
Why the OPRA request matters
The OPRA request asked for:
- Existing electronic communications concerning board/district business sent or received during the meeting
- Existing photos, screenshots, or images captured during identified timestamps
- District-retained email records during the meeting window
Timeline: recurring concerns in prior coverage
This January 2026 workshop didn’t happen in isolation. Prior reporting on this site has raised similar concerns over time about meeting focus, transparency, and accountability:
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Jan 7, 2025 - Phone use during student recognition In Hardyston BOE’s First Meeting: Where Are Their Priorities?, this site documented visible phone use by board leadership during student recognition.
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Mar 3, 2025 - OPRA follow-up on device-related records In What Was More Important Than Students? OPRA Results, this site reported that the district response indicated no responsive records to that specific request.
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Jul 11, 2025 - Records-handling/transparency concerns In YahooGate: Hardyston BOE President Donna Carey’s Private Inbox Revealed in OPRA Dump, prior coverage raised questions about official communications and records transparency.
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Dec 13, 2025 - Leadership presence concerns In Donna Carey and Kids First Leadership Absent from Regionalization Meeting as Others Attended, this site questioned absence from a key public regionalization discussion.
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Jan 20, 2026 - Budget-workshop phone-use concerns (current post) During core budget deliberations, an OPRA request identified multiple timestamp windows tied to visible device use and requested any corresponding district-accessible records.
Taken together, these posts point to a recurring concern from residents: whether Donna Carey is consistently showing focus and transparency when high-stakes decisions are being made.
Accountability and public confidence
Budget workshops are where districts face hard tradeoffs in real time: healthcare and utility increases, staffing decisions, building repairs, negotiations, and reserve planning. People watching those meetings have a right to expect visible attention from everyone at the table.
At minimum, this meeting reinforces something simple: clear standards and consistent behavior around device use matter, especially when public trust is already fragile.