The League required all the candidates to sign a waiver and rules, one of which was that we could not edit the video, we could not record the event ourselves, and we had to link to the video in its entirety. I have complied with that.
Below, I post links to and elaborate on the nine questions we were asked. The questions were all posed by the community and curated by the league.I thank the community and the league for the depth and quality of the questions.
The above linked video is both the Library Board and the School Board forums. The School Board part of the video starts at about the 35 minute mark. The forum starts with a 60 second opening statement by the candidates followed by questions followed by closing statements (1:55:45 mark of the video)
Question #1
Why are your running for a seat on the school board this year? What skills or knowledge will you bring to the position that you believe makes you qualified to serve as a school board member now?
Experience, perspective, knowledge, desire to reach out to and advocate for the 50+% of the CCSD households that do not have children in the schools, support academic excellence while promoting fiscal responsibility. I have served on the board when we had a zero budget increase. I have served when we had a zero tax levy increase. We accomplished this without damaging the academic offerings.
Academic excellence and fiscal responsibility are not mutually exclusive.
Question #2
What is the school board member's role and responsibilities? How does that role differ from that of the Superintendent or the administration? When differences of opinion arise, what is the best way to address those differences and reach a consensus?
I continue to be unwavering in my belief that the
community we serve is the broader community of not just parents with children
in the schools, but residents without school children too. The challenge as a Board member is to serve
all the community, not simply any one part of it.
I offer not just rhetoric but actionable suggestions. I
offer years of direct experience and a deep knowledge of district programs and
personnel. I offer perspective. I offer
leadership and consensus building skills.
I offer common sense with an uncommon commitment.
Thank you.
(I am working on summarizing and supplementing the remaining questions. I will update as I complete each section.)
The role and responsibilities of a school board member is actually pretty concise. The Board is an oversight board, not an operating board. The board does not get involved in the day-to-day operations of the district nor do they have responsibilities for curriculum or academics. By NY State Ed Law, the board is responsible for hiring and firing the Superintendent and for proposing a budget to the community. The Board also is responsible for setting district policies. In turn, everything the district does flows from the budget and the Superintendent's leadership. The budget is a road map of the district's priorities The Superintendent is in charge of all day-to-day operations, all day-to-day academic decisions, and implementation of Board policy. The Superintendent is like a corporation's CEO or the MFWIC. The Superintendent reports to the Board.
Is consensus the goal? I think the goal should be diversity of opinion and diversity of input. Decision making is best when more information and more points of view are brought to the process. I stand proud of the fact that for the past 13 years, except for one time, I am the only board member to have been on the end of a 4-1 vote. To be clear, that does not mean I do not support the Board's ultimate decision. If what is meant by consensus that everyone agrees, then consensus is not the goal. If what is meant by consensus is that at the end of the discussion after all points of view have been heard and considered. then the entire board supports going forward the majority decision, I support that consensus definition.
What I think is important is that as an elected official, that I go on record with both discussion and with my vote as to where I stand on an issue. It is important to have complete transparency on a board. Too often the CCSD board does fall into group think. I am proud that I think independently, am willing and able to give well thought out reasons for my decisions, and then vote for the way I think is best.
As a school board member, how would you learn of the concerns and experiences of those community members who are not of your demographic such as empty-nesters or parents of school age children?
The district does a terrific job contacting and reaching out to the households with school age children. It was my experience that the district never missed an opportunity to send me an email or contact me when my children were in school. Now that my children are out of the district and I am not on the board, I hear virtually nothing from the schools. The empty nesters, of which I am one, never hear from the district, never have our opinions solicited and quite frankly, means of potential communication are blocked.
When I was on the Board I advocated, actually begged to let me put my phone number on the website next to my name. Victoria Tipp, as president and subsequently repeatedly fought that request. Many empty nesters use the phone as their primary means of communication. It is virtually impossible to have and engaging dialogue over email or social media. These days, running into a resident in public or a resident running into a board member in public is actually almost prohibited.
I think the board should solicit two-way dialogue. I think just saying we reach out to the community center is not enough. This is what I mean by gaining perspective this past year. I do not think the board members actually realize that they structurally insulate themselves from open dialogue and communication. Self promotional Tweets using the #WeAreChappaqua hashtag serve a purpose I suppose, but that purpose is not communication.
Have you ever emailed the board with a concern or a comment or a suggestion? I did from the other side of the table several times this year. For the most part, you will not engage the Board or any board member in dialogue through email. You send an email and the board President responds to acknowledge receipt of the email with little of substance ever written back. The board has set up protocols that make it next to impossible for any individual board member to weigh in to an incoming email.
Put a board member's phone number on the website if they want. Set up town hall type meetings where there is no board items on the agenda other than hearing from and talking to the public. Heck, the Board actually changed practice to limit dialogue between the community and the public at board meetings. It was and is a knee jerk overreaction to how a few vocal members of the community tried to hijack the board's meeting during the Schraufnagel abuse case.
914-840-2233
Over the past year, there have been many changes to Special Education.Many parents have been vocal with their concerns regarding the District's programs. How will you ensure that Special Education students receive and exemplary services, demand transparency in planning and decision making while ensuring parent engagement and working to regain parent trust?
First, as I mentioned in my response, I will not tolerate anyone who tries to incite or implies that there should be some sort of class warfare between the expensive Special Ed students and the General Education students.
Second, I have been part of the CSE meeting process and having to advocate against the district for student services. It is a unnecessarily adversarial process. The State, in its infinite wisdom, says that the dsitrict, the education experts know best what is appropriate for a child not the parent. Structurally, by definition, the process is adversarial.
Third, the district this year has undertaken an analysis of the Special Education process from beginning to implementation. That analysis is not complete. The District has restructured the Special Education department including creating a new Assistant Superintendent position, a cabinet like position, that the district has not had in the past. With additional personnel added to the process and a complete analysis underway, I support waiting to hear the conclusions and recommendations that result. I also support getting input from all the Special Education students and parents who wish to weigh in before making any final decisions.
How can a school board know if its goals are being accomplished and its policies are being implemented? What are your thoughts around the way public comments work at school board meetings especially regarding the public asking questions and hearing the thoughts and getting a response from school board members during the meeting?
Metrics for success in an academic setting are hard to settle on. A lot of teaching and learning is individualistic to both the teacher and the student. You need to develop baseline standards for the district as a whole, different grade levels, for individual teachers and for individual students. When the state tried to intervene in the APPR process and change state testing, they simply softened the standards so more students could reach satisfactory levels.
The Board will know if its policies are being implemented by simple observation. Either the district is enforcing policy uniformly throughout the district or it is not.
The comment policy at school board meetings is an abomination. It is anti community, antil dialogue, anti transparency and structurally set up to fail. The board made the change to a 3 minute hard stop and no comments or discussion with the speaker afterwards while Vicky Tipp was President. If you watch the videos from the meetings at which we discussed the change, you sill see my adamant opposition to this change. As I wrote earlier, the change was and is a knee jerk overreaction to how a few vocal members of the community tried to hijack the board's meeting during the Schraufnagel abuse case.
The claim that it a school board best practice because that is what most other boards in Westchester do is such poor reasoning as to boggle the mind. We should set up a protocol as a best practice because other districts purposely limit input from residents, purposely try to stiffle dissent, are more worried about their personal time than hearing from the community, and want administrators to get their beauty sleep? It so bothers m soul to hide behind the cloak of poor and restrictive decision making of other districts as a best practice so we can save time at a meeting. I was elected to represent the community and I darn well want to hear from the people I represent. With all due respect to the administrators who have to stay late and who Jane is trying to protect, it is part of your job to attend and participate in Board meetings. To be clear, our administrators are doing a terrific job and they are not the ones complaining. It is board members being paternal in a conflicted way.
If you watch the Board meeting from a few meetings ago, I was making public comment and literally got cut off mid sentence at the 3 minute mark. (I finished the sentence, about 3 seconds, at the next meeting's public comment period.) Then, immediately after being prevented from finishing my last sentence, the board stopped the meeting to debate this practice for at least 10 minutes and concluded that no, I could not finish my sentence. Watch the video. You will not know whether to laugh or cry.
Can you imagine what would have happened to the Board members who participated in the LWV Candidate night if the League had cut their mic at exactly the 1.5 minute mark? Bedlam would have ensued.
The change made to this practice is part of a pattern of decision making that is anti transparency and anti the public.
As many of you know, the current budget calls for a reduction of a 1st grade teacher at Grafflin Elementary School for next year, given the inadequacies of distance learning, many Grafflin kindergarten parents are particularly concerned about our kindergartners next year and what a significant increase in class size will mean to these students.Many Grafflin kindergarten parents spoke at board meetings, wrote letters and lobbied the school board to consider making cuts elsewhere but not teachers for our younger students. Unfortunately, the current school board is proposing a budget that continues to call for this reduction. Why is this not a priority for the incumbent school board members running for reelection and what would the other candidates have done differently?
This is a long question but there really is only one appropriate short response. I would have 100% added the additional section and earmarked it in the budget. It is pure common sense.
While I know there are studies that say call size does not matter, there are also more studies demonstrating that it does. Regardless, I cannot imagine how a smaller elementary class size would be detrimental. The Administration and Board acknowledged that there is room in the budget to add another section in August. If the money is there, why not make this decision now? Why make the parents wait for some magical information that is suddenly going to appear in August?
This are our youngest learners. They are most affected by the distance learning. It appears as if the Board and the Administration are not fully appreciating the changes we are forced to undertake with Covid-19. The Board and Administration sees fit to add another administrator in the athletic department yet cannot see fit to add another 1st grade section? Somewhere along the way, the board lost its way and lost sight of their priorities.
How does the school board balance the need to provide a quality education with the need to respond to local taxpayer burdens? Do you understand all of the elements that go into building district budgets? How do you ensure that a budget is both fiscally responsible and provide all students with the tools that they need to succeed?
While I am not calling the budget irresponsible, I believe
the Board has missed an opportunity to address the new economic reality as well
as begin to reign in costs. High academic
standards and fiscally responsible budgets are not mutually exclusive. I was on
the Board when we proposed and passed a ZERO budget change. No increase. I was on the Board when we proposed and passed a ZERO tax levy increase. Yet, since then, the district has thrived both academically and fiscally.
With the threat of State Aid cuts, now is the time to be
proactive. Yet, the Board is proposing a
1.65% increase to the budget resulting in a 1.61% increase in New Castle taxes
and a 2.79% increase in Mt. Pleasant taxes. Compare that to neighboring districts such as
Byrum Hills which has a proposed ZERO budget increase, Katonah-Lewisboro which
is proposing a ZERO percent increase in their tax levy or even Scarsdale,
everyone’s favorite comparison, which is proposing an approximate 1% budget
increase or 30% less than Chappaqua.
The Board, at several meetings this spring has made it clear
that they have no intention of reducing the tax levy or returning savings from
this year’s budget to the taxpayer. What
was clearly and openly stated at Board budget meetings was that they intend to push
next year’s expenses into this year’s budget so that they can take advantage of
the savings generated by the Covid-19 shut down. Rather than lower next year’s tax levy, they
chose to “spend it or lose it’ this year.
[Expanded analysis]: On several occasions, at Board meetings, the members of the Board and the administration made statements summarized as, "We recognize we need to raise taxes this year so we can raise them next year." I do not even know where to begin parsing that concept. One, they are already determining that they need to raise taxes next year and apparently they think it is an annual required ritual to raise taxes. Two, while the way the tax levy calculation method is designed does constrain future years based on current year, the district, when I sat on the board seemed to manage that issue perfectly well.
To add insult to injury, in trying to recreate this year's tax levy, while I was building the spreadsheet, I noticed that because of the way the tax levy uses bond debt borrowed for capital improvements, the $42.5 million bond DID in fact cause the tax levy raise amount to increase and the Board did in fact raise taxes to pay for the bond despite its assurances to the public as part of the pre vote discussion that it would not.
When I pointed this out to the Board via email and an attached copy of my spreadsheet, I suggested too that they take this year's budget, one that demands a greater level of austerity and lower the increase (NOT a decrease, just a lower increase) by approximately $400,000 and that would put the district in compliance over the three year period with the commitment to not raise taxes as a result of the bond. The board clearly did not accept the analysis or implement the suggestion.
Now, because of the economy, it could take years to get into compliance even if the board intends to do so. And any delay brings up a timing issue as to why one group of tax payers overpaid and do not get back the overpayment in the form of savings for at least 5-7 years.
It appears to me as if the Board and Administration is purposely sitting on this information until after the board and budget vote. That just adds another level to the troubling nature of the situation. Transparency is out the window.
To be clear, I am not accusing the district or the administration or the board of anything illegal. I am accusing them if not honoring a recent previous boards commitment to the community and then covering up that they would not honor that commitment. I would also like to be clear that one Board Member did contact me as an individual (not speaking for the Board) and said they would look into it. That was 3 weeks ago. My follow-up email resulted in a short response that they were still working on it. I do not want to breach a board member's confidence, but if that board member wishes to identify themselves, I would publicly thank them for understanding the issue, understanding the gravity of the issue and the implications that are too long to list here.
Earlier this month, Governor Cuomo stated that, "The old model of our education system where everyone sits in a classroom is not going to work in the new normal. Indicating and announcing a partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that remote learning could be the wave of the future. What is your position on classroom learning? If the State attempts to significantly alter the classroom model and replace it with remote learning, what should the Board and District do in response?
This is another Govenor Cuomo and NY State unfunded mandate. Public education in this country, in this state was founded on the basis of local control. That is why we have 700 school districts in NY and why we elect 700 different school boards. As noted earlier, one of the responsibilities of a school board is to hire the Superintendent. School Board members are not required to be experts in education or in teaching and learning. The whole point of hiring a Superintendent who then hires their own team, is to hire an expert in education.
What we as a Board or we as a district or we as a community should do if the Governor insists on imposing teaching methods on local school districts from his throne in Albany, we should ignore him and do what the Board in conjunction with the administrators determine is in the best interest of OUR students, of our staff and of our local community.
I am not even sure he can legally impose remote learning on local districts, but if he can, we should fight him court to regain local control. To be clear, I am not weighing in on the merits of him forcing remote learning, I am adamant that that decision is a decision to be made locally by a school board.
I support classroom learning. I think you also need to look at this from the perspective of our youngest learners in elementary school, our middle schoolers and our high schoolers. The elementary students would have the hardest time with remote learning.
I think more details are needed. What is meant by remote learning? I could see some great benefits to having a link to say a world famous chemist who lives in say California who provides weekly remote learning lessons to our students that are all centrally located in our classrooms. While I think we have the best staff of teachers here in our district, being able to access other experts anywhere in the world to teach our students would be an incredible opportunity. Remote learning could be the teacher is remote and the students are in a local classroom.
Finally, NY State does not have a good track record partnering with private corporations to help with public education. Although I assume the Gates Foundation is non-profit, I still see many many conflicts that would be hard to overcome.
What are your thoughts on the current and proposed budget for the school district. Given the economic conditions due to the effects of the pandemic, as a board member, where would you look to make budget cuts and are there any areas you would not consider cutting?
This was a difficult question to answer because we already had a "budget question" (#7). For more details and a discussion of my thoughts on the budget see my answer to Question #7 and see the link (here) to my response to a budget question from Martin Wilbur of The Examiner.
In short, I think the board missed a good opportunity to make additional cuts to this year's budget. Look no further than the Administration's own proposal of Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. Here is a link to the Administration's Power Point presentation a recent BoE meeting. The relevant slide is slide #7. The Board rejected many of those possible cuts.
Not only did the board reject possible cuts proposed by the administration, they rejected changing the revenue side of the equation further than the changes made by the administration. They did not allocate the use of more fund balance, they did not reduce the estimate for sales tax back to a more realistic level and they did not factor in a highly likely cut in State Aid. The board and administration made several statements along the line of we need to raise taxes this year so we can raise them next year.
At another meeting, the Administration indicated that if the cuts are drastic enough, they would have to make mid-year cuts in teaching and staff. It appeared to me that the Board tacitly approved this concept by not saying anything at the time in opposition. If we have to make mid-year teacher cuts, that is as a result of poor planning regarding a result, a terrible outcome, that could have been foreseen.
Thank you to the League of Women Voters for giving us the opportunity to demonstrate to the community our knowledge of, our deep understanding of, and our appreciation for the many issues facing the district and the community. Thank you to the community. Go vote. Of course, vote for me, but please exercise your right to vote on the two budgets and the two slates of board candidates on the ballot.
The actual text of my closing statement.:
Again, I would like to thank the League of Women Voters,
my fellow candidates, and the community.
The candidates were asked many questions tonight. Now, I ask one thing of you. I ask that you take the time to return your
ballot. All of you. It goes without
saying I want you to vote for me, but, as important, go vote on the budget.
I continue to be passionate about education, our district
and its importance to our future. We as
parents can offer no greater inheritance to our children than an outstanding,
well rounded and varied education.
Education’s importance to our future is not simply to give our students
a running start into the rest of their lives; the community needs to have the
proper balance between fiscal austerity and maintaining our academic excellence
in order to support the premise on which our community rests.
(I am working on summarizing and supplementing the remaining questions. I will update as I complete each section.)
