Photos by Sean Quinn
The nine Board of Education candidates appeared at the debate sponsored by the Maplewood-South Orange League of Women Voters on Oct. 21. from left, are Elissa Malespina, Madhu Pai, Marian Raab, Shannel Roberts and Chris Sabin.
Photos by Sean Quinn
The nine Board of Education candidates appeared at the debate sponsored by the Maplewood-South Orange League of Women Voters on Oct. 21. From left, are Wayne Eastman, Margaret ‘Peggy’ Freedson, Dorcas Lind and Annemarie Maini.
MAPLEWOOD/SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — This year’s South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education race features nine candidates running for just three open seats, making the 2015 election especially heated. But the large number of candidates may make it difficult for voters to keep track of who is in favor of what when they head to the polls.
Fortunately, each of the nine — incumbents President Wayne Eastman and first Vice President Madhu Pai, along with their running mate Margaret “Peggy” Freedson; Elissa Malespina, Marian Raab and Shannel Roberts, who are running together on the Team SOMA 2015 ticket; Annemarie Maini and Chris Sabin, who comprise yet another ticket; and Dorcas Lind, the election’s sole independent candidate — individually sat down with the News-Record to discuss what they plan to do if elected to the board, particularly concerning the issues of taxes, communication and closing the achievement gap.
With a $20 million deficit looming on the district’s horizon, taxes are understandably a hot topic for BOE candidates this year. And, according to Eastman, his ticket is the only one with the commitment necessary to make sure the board is fiscally responsible. If re-elected, the Rutgers University professor said he would continue to be responsible with taxpayers’ money by keeping tax rates below the state-mandated 2-percent cap. To do this, he said he would hold district spending to a certain number while providing overall fiscal guidance and accountability to the administration and respecting its decisions on what to cut.
Pai said she is proud of her consistent voting record to hold the board to the 2-percent tax levy of the operating budget. If re-elected, the senior vice president and group director for Publicis said she wants to push the administration to handle the budget process differently, particularly the notion that the board’s sole choice should be what to cut or whether to raise taxes, based on the budget from the previous year. Pai said the board should present the administration with a set of focused goals and expect that every line item in the budget will be scrutinized in search of efficiencies. Additionally, she said she wants to make sure the administration is looking for revenue growth beyond the tax base.
“I am committed to making sure that we have a more rigorous budget process,” Pai said in an Oct. 23 interview. “I need board members who will align with me on that. Right now, I don’t have a majority.”
Though she lacks the board experience of her running mates, Freedson said that, if elected, she would be just as committed to fiscal responsibility as Eastman and Pai. The Montclair State University professor said she would look into professional development opportunities that would allow teachers to share their expertise and work collaboratively to create an enhanced learning atmosphere instead of spending for outside programs like the failed middle school International Baccalaureate program. She added that she would also continue to re-examine the teachers’ health benefits package for potential savings and look at how the district can get more funding from the state.
While Malespina admitted that there is “no magic bullet” to solve the school district’s financial woes, she argued there is plenty to be done to save money. First, the Somerville Middle School librarian said she would bring in an independent auditor to review the budget line-by-line because “we have a tendency and we were cited for not spending our money correctly,” referring to the district’s Title IX spending violations in 2013. Both of Malespina’s running mates, Raab and Roberts, also cited this as a goal, saying that the district “needs to be careful about every dollar we spend,” according to Raab.
Malespina also said she would not continue with expenses that are not working, pointing to the IB program — which she spoke out against while still a teacher-librarian at South Orange Middle School — and the special education consultant. Lastly, Malespina said she would work with South Orange, Maplewood, Seton Hall University and the South Orange Performing Arts Center, among other groups, to avoid duplicating services while pushing the board to lead the charge in calling on the state to change its school-funding formula.
Raab, a veteran legal and financial journalist, said the district is not being as careful as it should be, spending thousands on the discontinued IB program while paying an outside company for custodians and supplies when it could have kept its own maintenance staff for less money. She additionally stressed that she would ask tough questions of the administration regarding its spending instead of just rubber stamping everything it says.
Roberts plans to look into why the state has taken money away from the district. But above all Roberts, the executive assistant to the CEO and executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest New Jersey, said she wants to make sure that any budget approved by the board would be best for the student population.
“We need to invest in the child,” Roberts said in an Oct. 23 in-office interview. “We need a budget that is centered on the child, and when you do that it becomes a win-win situation. When the child wins, we all win.”
Maini has several ideas about how to save money and increase revenue for the school district, starting with presenting the state with a case on why suburban districts, like SOMA, deserve increased funding. The South Orange Country Day Preschool owner also suggested re-examining whether outsourcing is paying off, getting high school supervisors more involved in the classroom, charging tuition for the district’s arts program to outside schools that do not have such classes and working with Essex County College to offer courses. In addition, she said the district should be spending only on what is necessary.
“The first thing we need to do is align our current budget to what our priorities are,” Maini said in an Oct. 15 interview. “Right now, even though I’ve studied the budget and even though I’ve looked at the vast majority of the documents, there is no clear alignment between what we say our goals are and how we’re spending our money. And I think we, as a community, should demand that and make sure that every dollar that we’re spending today is getting us toward our goals.”
Sabin said that, rather than raise taxes, the board should become more efficient with the money it already has. For example, he said that he would look into providing higher-level education to gifted middle school students instead of sending them to Columbia High School, lowering transportation costs. The marketing and promotions executive also said he would pursue grants and other sources of revenue for the district.
If elected, Lind said she would work with the administration to ensure the schools were implementing all policies effectively without exceeding the 2-percent cap. She said she would also review the budget to see where funds are being allocated and how waste could be cut. Additionally, the founder of Diversity Health Communications said she would look to utilize teacher expertise rather than hire outside consultants, as well as partner with local institutions to save money.
While taxes remain a hot-button issue, “communication” is the key word this election. Communication has become a subject of frustration for many South Orange-Maplewood parents who feel they are not being heard by the BOE, prompting the Malespina-Raab-Roberts ticket to call for a change. The three candidates said that “Let’s Talk,” the recently implemented program meant to improve customer service, is not a “magic fix” for this issue, pointing out that it will actually cost the district between $40,000 to $50,000 if its use is extended beyond the initial trial period. In fact, Raab said the program would not be necessary if the district simply mandated that administrators respond to emails within 48 hours. Other communication quick fixes, according to Malespina, could include streamlining the district’s website and relying more on social media to spread information, providing child care at events so more parents can attend, and offering times to talk during gatherings like school dances, when many parents are already at school to drop off their children.
The board should take the time to address issues at BOE meetings that are brought up by parents during public comment, according to the Team SOMA 2015 candidates. They said answering residents’ concerns promptly after they’ve been raised in meetings — even if it means telling residents the board will look into it — will clear up confusion and eliminate frustration.
Coupled with that, the candidates stressed that holding two meetings per month rather than one is essential; with more meetings, parents will not have to wait a month just to voice their concerns, thus lessening frustration. Malespina pointed out that holding two shorter meetings, with speakers split between them, benefits the decision-making process.
“When you have a meeting that goes until one in the morning,” Malespina said in an Oct. 16 interview, “how can you make
a decision at one in the morning after you’ve worked all day and then you’re sitting on the dais for five hours? Nobody can do that. And that’s the time when they’re passing the budget line items and all of that. So we have to move to two board meetings.”
Eastman and Pai agreed that communication can stand to be improved, but said responding to each issue raised by a resident in a meeting would only make a long meeting longer, and added that a BOE meeting is not the right place to engage in a potentially emotional or volatile dialog. Instead, the Eastman-Pai-Freedson ticket touted the new “Let’s Talk” as a program already showing signs of success, with residents hearing back about their concerns within two business days. And Pai pointed out that the goal is to do away with the program eventually — after quick response times become the district standard.
Aside from “Let’s Talk,” Eastman said he plans to continue the positive manner in which he has conducted board meetings as president, while Pai said she would reinstate her office hours as long as people actually took advantage of them. Freedson, unlike her running mates, said she would be interested in making the public comment a more informal interaction in addition to holding informal meetings between board members and stakeholder groups. In addition, she said she would always be available by phone or email because it is important to her that parents know she is there for them.
“I certainly understand because I’ve been on the other end of that,” Freedson said in an Oct. 16 in-office interview. “I’ve been the parent reaching out to administrators and teachers and having very slow response times or no response, and I’ve felt the incredible frustrations that that brings. So every parent needs to know that yes, there is another person there at the other end of that communication, listening and responding.”
Running mates Maini and Sabin also had ideas about how to resolve communication issues in the district. In addition to streamlining the district website, Maini wants to add an online graphic organizer that would list a resident’s issue while respecting privacy, the person responsible for resolving it, the estimated response time and eventually the solution. She also advocated for posting individual committee minutes on the Internet as well as allowing residents to address concerns to committee members at the beginning of meetings. Sabin said “Let’s Talk” is a good tool for the district to use as long as administrators respond proactively, but called turning the public comment time in board meetings into a dialog “wonderful.”
Lind agreed with this, saying the fact that no issues are addressed during meetings is a “real breach in transparency and communication.” She added that, instead of spending money on “Let’s Talk,” administrators should get back to people quickly through social media at no cost.
Closing the district’s achievement gap is perhaps the third most pressing issue in the district. Following a complaint filed with the federal Office for Civil Rights and a report from Sage Educational Consultants, many residents have expressed concern about the marked difference in test scores between whites and blacks, males and females, and special education and non-special education students.
Eastman said he has worked to close the gap by bringing up test scores for all demographics since he joined the board in 2006, and he intends to continue doing so if re-elected. He said a key to this is implementing the recently passed Access and Equity Policy, a measure to allow students to choose their own class level. Eastman said he is proud the policy he has championed for so long has finally been approved, but stressed that he does not intend to put the policy into effect on his own — working with teachers to figure out how to best go about doing so is a must.
“To make it work, it’s going to have to involve an extensive level of collaboration working with our teachers,” Eastman said. “I’m very optimistic that we can get this to work as a process of culture change in the district toward access and toward empowerment that would include students and parents but also very much teachers.”
In fact, every single candidate applauded the recently passed policy, though stressed that it must be implemented well to be effective.
Pai pointed out that the district has been shrinking the achievement gaps since she has been on the board, saying she believes the elementary reading intervention program she pushed for has been a critical contributing factor. Moving forward, she said she hopes to see a better delivery model for special education services, further closing the achievement gap and ensuring parents do not have to fight to get what their children need.
Similarly, Freedson advocated for all students to have a strong educational foundation. If elected to the board, she said she would focus on enhancing the elementary and middle school curriculum by expanding the reading intervention program to the fourth and fifth grades while also exploring how to improve the language arts curriculum, a process she said will be benefited by her background as an early childhood language arts education specialist. She also said she would look into emphasizing writing at earlier ages and incorporating study skills, such as note-taking, into classes.
Malespina said she is particularly passionate about closing the achievement gap — after all, she was part of the Sage
Educational Consultants team that studied it and she saw the disparity firsthand when she taught in the district.
She said that the Access and Equity Policy is well-intentioned but broad, which means implementation will determine its effectiveness. And she said that the board clearly has a “problem implementing things” — pointing out that the measure would not have been necessary in the first place had the district effectively pursued the similar contract for choice policy already on the books — which means success in not ensured.
Raab agreed that leveling is not working; one student had told her that they could go into any classroom in the district and determine the class’ level based entirely on students’ skin color. She said her goal upon being elected would be to “dismantle” the current system and start anew so that no children are left stuck in a level from which they cannot move on. She also said getting input from parents and children would be essential moving forward.
“We need to hear how parents and students think we can really do this before we sit down in a closed session and make these God-like pronouncements on how we’re going to open up AP courses to minority children,” Raab said. “Clearly we’re not doing it now. We are failing our children, and we need to listen to our parents and we need to listen to our children to figure out how to fix this.”
Roberts agreed with Raab about the Access and Equity Policy implementation, saying “the devil is in the details.” Additionally, she said a culture shift from the top down is necessary to focus on supporting each child’s learning instead of only benefiting the high achievers or students who need extra help. She said there should be an expectation of success in every classroom, otherwise students will fail.
To combat the achievement gaps, Maini suggested looking at what each student is passionate about and giving them multiple assessments to provide them with an educational path and an action plan. She said the district should also talk with students about where they currently are and where they wish to end up while holding them, their teachers and their parents accountable for their success. Even the larger South Orange-Maplewood community can help, Maini said, suggesting that the district could find people from the two towns to mentor students.
Sabin said his strategy for reducing the achievement gap focuses on improving services for all children at the elementary school level. The candidate explained that making sure students receive a good education upon starting school and that they are reading at the correct grade level will put them on the right track for academic success down the road.
“Maplewood and South Orange is an area where everybody is accepted and everybody is part of the community, but I will say — as far as the delivery of services in the school system is concerned — it’s trying but it’s not hitting the mark,” Sabin said. “We need to make sure that we can change that and have everybody at the table.”
As a consultant specializing in increasing diversity in the workplace, Lind is especially interested in the racial achievement gap; she said the district really needs to address the “unconscious biases” of administrators and teachers, saying that everyone unknowingly has biases against people who are different and, within the school district, that behavior results in the gap. To correct this, she said people must acknowledge their biases through cultural competency training and similar initiatives in order to then consciously ignore them and provide the best help possible to students.
“Difference is real, and it’s valuable and it’s what will lead us to better learning and innovation,” Lind said. “We need to be able to celebrate difference and also manage behaviors and attitudes where difference leads to deferential treatment.”
Remember, the South Orange and Maplewood BOE election is Tuesday, Nov. 3. With nine candidates running for only three seats, residents are encouraged to choose carefully and participate in this election by casting their ballot.