Candidate for
Member, Board of Education; Briarcliff Manor Union Free School District

Issues (in no particular order)

Below you will find a partial list of some things I believe. What I believe most is that Board members should not come to the table with an agenda. It is their responsibility to develop their agenda by listening carefully and constructively to the community. Thus, a candidate for the Board should have some general philosophies and principles. However, the agenda is developed by and with the community.

Representation The entire community must be represented. This includes those with preschoolers, looking forward to educating their children in our schools, Todd Parents, Middle and High School Parents and also those whose children are grown and out on their own. We all pay school taxes. We all deserve a clear voice in how they are deployed. They affect the quality of our children's educations, the values of our property and the bite that comes out of our wallets.

With that said, among the remaining Board members, there is no Board member who will have a child in Todd School next year. A well balanced Board requires representation by a Todd parent among its members.

Whose School District Is It? This is your school district. These are your tax dollars being spent. These are your children being educated. These are your property values and incomes being affected.

So, you all get a voice...period. The system must serve the needs of the many, not an elite few.

Listening and Responding Board members should listen carefully, completely and intently to everyone in the community. In turn, all in the community who express themselves and ask questions deserve acknowledgement and answers.

We are a well educated District population with much to offer. Everyone must be heard, acknowledged and responded to.

Educational Excellence Educational excellence must be maintained at all levels of the educational process. Our school district must maintain its standard of excellence and its position amongst the best in the County. To do this, we must work closely and carefully with the administration and the educators. We must allow them the autonomy they require to guide the Board.

The Board must defer to the administration and the educators on the issue of maintaining educational excellence. Sacrifices, due to fiscal realities, should seldom result in painful reductions that threaten the academic excellence of our district + in any of our schools.

Fiscal Responsibility Our nation has just experienced something about as dramatic, economically, as we have seen since the Great Depression. We're calling this one the Great Recession. Many in our community have been personally affected. Recessions of this magnitude hit the corporate world early and the municipalities late.

While there is evidence that the national economy is recovering, there will likely be a lag that effects governments, municipalities and thus school districts last. That likely means next year's budget will be an even tougher budget to shape. With that said, the Board must apply a different approach to shaping the budget in the coming year. Budgets should be cut with scalpels, line by line, nickel by nickel. A budget cut does not need to be a painful, emotional issue for any contingent in the community. It is healthy to pinpoint a target and then to work toward that target. It is unhealthy to get there with a sledgehammer, rather than a scalpel. And, the community must be heard in the process.

Benchmarking The Board must identify the districts it aspires to compete with, academically. The list must be one that the community agrees on. It must be a list that remains the same for all comparisons. It is not constructive to compare ourselves to certain districts for financial benchmarking and others for academic benchmarking. If the community feels that academic excellence is our priority, then we must choose academic peers to benchmark against.

If the community prioritizes fiscal responsibility, then we must choose districts of similar size to benchmark against. Benchmarks must be established, both quantitative and qualitative, in order to continuously report to the community how we stack up to the benchmark districts.

Process It is imperative that processes be evaluated and redeveloped. It is clear, by the dis-harmony created by the recent budget process, that the process needs a full evaluation and perhaps a full scale overhaul.

The breakdown in the processes of budgeting along with other processes has created deep rifts between the Board, the community and the Administration. As well, it has caused morale issues throughout the schools and retention issues among key personnel. A new process must be evaluated not only for effectiveness for reaching reasonable goals, but for healing the rifts and encouraging a more harmonious relationship between the Board, the community and the Administration.

Safety First First, we live in a world where we turn on the news all too frequently to hear about terrible incidents ranging from amber alerts to cyber-bullying to drug and alcohol abuse to Columbine-like incidents.

Security is extremely important. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We live in a fine District. However, we must recognize that incidents like this can happen anywhere. I would not want to be on the Board dealing with a situation that could have been avoided if there were full security measures and personnel in place.

Second, our children's health must be paramount at all times and must always be prioritized above all else. If it turns out that the levels of toxicity at the ball fields is a health risk to our children, then the issue must be dealt with expediently. This is in full realization that rectifying this issue may have significant financial impact on our community. Our children's health must come first in dealing with this issue.

Transparency The Board must adopt a more transparent approach. All meetings should allow for public access and comment. An environment where either the community or the Administration feels disenfranchised is unacceptable. The Administration needs a closer, team approach with the Board. The community needs to be in the loop and informed as well as heard, acknowledged and responded to.

The accusations of secrecy and disenfranchisement must be a thing of the past. Furthermore, all board members must be involved in all Board matters on an equal footing basis. This website, should I be successful to fill a Board seat, would live as a communication mechanism to the community on my behalf.

Superintendent Search As we search for a new Superintendent, we should be focused on an individual with the following qualities: a creative, optimistic individual who has a proven track record of trust, credibility and respect with faculty; someone who demonstrates the ability to heal the community in the wake of recent events; someone who will exude an assurance to the community that our schools will continue to be a center of stability, strength and excellence;

someone who will remain optimistic regardless of the economic challenges our district continues to face; an individual with a strong demonstrated track record of dealing effectively with a wide range of challenges; an individual who finds opportunities where others find challenges; an individual who comes to us with ample district experience (perhaps from the curriculum area or a strong principal); an individual with a long enough track record to command the respect of the community, the faculty, the board and the students.

Student-Teacher Ratio There is much evidence that educational success, especially at the formative stages in the elementary grades, correlates with low student-teacher ratio. The function of Aides in the classroom is invaluable in creating a nurturing educational environment for our children + especially at Todd School.

The reduction of Aides for the coming school year poses an alarming concern. While Aides occasionally perform clerical, non-educational tasks, their time is primarily spent as a means to creating an educationally appropriate student-teacher ratio. This pays dividends beginning in Kindergarten and all the way through 12. Our Aides are the best deal in town.