Experience, empathy and equity are at the heart of my campaign
Experience
It is the job of the school board, through policy and governance oversight, to ensure that the schools are well run. As an expert in K-12 public education operations, finance, governance, risk and controls, I have the training and experience to assess risks to the effective achievement of the school district’s goals and priorities, and to execution of its critical programs. I understand the mission of public schools and the business of public schools.
As Auditor General of the New York City Public Schools, I assessed and identified opportunities for improvement in policies, procedures, systems and controls in areas including special education identification, evaluation, placement and service, English Language Learner identification, placement and service, course crediting, testing and graduation determinations, registration and enrollment, teacher scheduling, budget allocations to schools, regulatory and grant compliance.
In my time as Business Administrator and Board Secretary for the Montclair Public Schools, we drove material infrastructure improvements, including the most significant technology upgrades in district history, improving internet speeds, taking the district from 9:1 to 3:1 for students and 1:1 for teachers in core subject areas, replacing blackboards with smart boards, and funding renovations to modernize the MHS cafeteria, technology lab and library/media center, the Glenfield planetarium, and more. We funded the restoration of live world language instruction in all elementary schools. We restored health benefits to paraprofessionals whose benefits had been taken away in the prior collective bargaining agreement. In response to recommendations from the Achievement Gap Advisory Panel, we created and funded positions for an Assistant Superintendent for Equity and a Student Equity Advocate. We provided Undoing Racism training to all district employees. We developed and delivered a successful case against NJDOE approval of an application for a French Dual-Language Charter School that would have potentially drawn extensive funding/resources from our public schools. I also provided the most transparent, detailed and comprehensive budget presentations and supporting data and documentation in district history, and collaborated annually with MEA leadership even during a period of high labor-management tensions to secure documentation of retirements and resignations to minimize the need for staff reductions even in challenging budget years.
In my five years with the New York City School Construction Authority, I have overseen the enterprise risk management and internal audit function for the public authority dedicated to building and modernizing safe, attractive and environmentally sound public schools for children throughout New York City, in a responsible and cost-effective manner while achieving the highest standards of excellence in safety, quality and integrity. In that time, I have deepened my knowledge in all aspects of the capital plan development and execution lifecycle, including capital plan development and project prioritization, scoping and design, bid and award, construction and closeout. If Montclair voters approve the pending $187 million bond proposal to support desperately needed investments in our school facilities and infrastructure, my experience will help the Board to assess risks to the successful execution of the approved projects and to establish best practices, controls and reporting to drive on-time and on-budget project completion.
Empathy
I have always been committed to open, inclusive, respectful, empathetic and collaborative dialog, deliberation and decision-making. As a parent of two children in the district, an elected parent representative through the PTA, and an administrator of the Montclair Moms, Dads and Parents Facebook Group, I have been broadly and deeply engaged in active listening, engagement and support with fellow parents, and have a strong sense of the challenges parents face in understanding and navigating the complexities of the district and the schools and determining how best to support their children’s educational, health and safety, and social and emotional needs. And the degree of difficulty has risen dramatically with the explosion of social media and the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a lifelong Mountie, resident and taxpayer, I recognize the importance of sustaining and reinvigorating our sense of Montclair pride, tradition and community through the challenges of gentrification, urbanization and cost of living increases, as well as the isolation and polarization of the internet age. I understand the history and the criticality of Montclair’s magnet system and the courtesy busing program to diversity and equity. And through much of my career, in Montclair and elsewhere, I have worked in close collaboration with school and district administrators, teachers and other certified and non-certified instructional support staff, as well as operations, maintenance, technology, health and security school support staff, and have developed deep respect and empathy for the dedicated professionals in those roles.
As a former Montclair Public Schools administrator, I understand the incredible challenges of running a school and running the district, and of developing and managing a budget to support initiatives to drive positive change in the face of steadily rising costs, increasing regulatory mandates, and tight limits on revenues. And as someone raised by an educator and married to an educator, I recognize and understand the passion and commitment of educators, the immense amount of work they do on behalf of their students outside of their paid hours, and the impact on teacher morale of the “education wars” and “culture wars,” of constantly-shifting directives and mandates, of the threat of school shootings, of deficiencies in facilities and resources, professional respect and support. I promise to bring empathy for all stakeholders into my work and my engagement should I be elected to the Board of Education.
Equity
I believe that public schools can and must strive to be an engine for greater equity in our society, supporting all children in reaching their potential as educated, well-rounded and engaged members of their communities. I am committed to the belief that all issues that come before the school board – fiscal, operational, academic, climate and culture – should be examined through a lens of commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. From the start of my legal career as a law clerk to Justice Gary S. Stein when the New Jersey Supreme Court was analyzing critical questions with respect to the state’s history of inequitable school funding and the remedies required to redress such inequities, through my engagement as Montclair Public Schools Business Administrator with the Achievement Gap Advisory Panel and the initiative to provide all district employees with Undoing Racism training, through my sustained engagement with the Montclair NAACP Education Committee and the Montclair PTA Council Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee (previously named the Equity, Antiracism and the Opportunity Gap Committee) and active recruitment of more parents of color into PTA leadership, and my work at the New York City School Construction Authority, where I helped found and continue to serve as facilitator and secretary for the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, I have strived to put my moral commitment to equity into action. Please see my “On the Issues” links for more specific ideas on how we can advance equity in the Montclair Public Schools.