Board hopefuls debate high school decisions
Monroe candidates also weigh in on No Child Left Behind
BY JESSICA SMITH
Staff Writer

While three incumbents are looking to hold on to their seats on the Monroe Township Board of Education, four others are trying to work their way in.

Current members Amy Speizer, Carol Haring and Lew Kaufman are being challenged by newcomers Russell Boyd, Ken Chiarella and Ira Tessler, along with former member Carol Bjornsen.

At a March 20 forum at the Barclay Brook Elementary School and in interviews with the Sentinel, candidates discussed their views on a variety of concerns facing the district. Among the more pressing issues were the controversial plan to build the new high school in a section of Thompson Park, and the district's failure to meet the criteria of the No Child Left Behind Act.

While Kaufman and Speizer said they fully support the plan for the new high school, Haring voiced mixed feelings. While she supports the land diversion, she said the process has taken far too long.

"I'm just totally disgusted that my motion for a contingency plan was just torpedoed," Haring said. "The question here is, 'How long is too long?' I don't see that we're putting kids first."

Haring, a 12-year board member, made a motion at the Jan. 10 meeting to come up with alternative plans for the high school by the time of its Feb. 21 meeting. The plans would have provided a course of action to fall back on if the proposed school in the park is unable to be built. The motion passed in a 5-4 vote but was reversed at the next meeting.

Kaufman, who is finishing his second term on the board, said it would be much more expensive and foolish to try to come up with a new plan at the current stage of the game. He was involved in the ad hoc committee to find a location for the new school, as well as Kids 1st, an advocacy group for public schoolchildren.

"This is turning out to be a milestone of what other districts are looking at," Kaufman said. "I'm totally behind the project as slated right now, and I hope that we have closure just as soon as possible."

Speizer, a 15-year board veteran, expressed confidence in the board's decisions regarding the new high school, and its ability to carry out the project.

Tessler supports the board's decisions as well.

"Although the process has taken longer than everyone has hoped for, I believe we will get the title to the land in the next month, and that we need to see the plan through to its conclusion," Tessler said.

A five-year trustee of the Monroe Education Foundation and three-year member of Kids 1st, Tessler proposed several ways to offset the $36 million shortfall in the budget of the high school project, including shared services and temporarily eliminating non-essential components of the building.

Boyd discussed the shortfall in different terms.

"The root cause of most of the problems you see on the board is poor planning," Boyd said.

An associate director of project management, Boyd said his planning skills could be an asset to the board.

"For the past six to nine months, they have known they had a shortfall, but they haven't planned for what to do about the shortfall," Boyd said. "Part of project management is to plan well enough that you can limit the time, the effort and the cost, and I think the way this board has operated in the past few years has cost the public time, effort and dollars."

Chiarella said that while he supports the current plan for the land diversion, the way the board has gone about implementing it has lacked forethought.

"This $36 million shortfall could have been avoided," Chiarella said. "Somebody has to tackle these problems head on. We can't just sit here and wait."

If elected, Chiarella said, he will do everything possible to speed up the process of securing the funds for the school, as well as bringing an end to the lawsuit brought against the township by Park Savers and other groups.

Bjornsen, who served on the board from 1998-2001, said the board should consider an alternate site because of all the problems that have arisen with the current one. She said the board was warned about litigation before initiating the plans, but did not take heed, and that it is not providing the public with the answers it deserves.

"I do not agree with the park site," Bjornsen said. "That high school was needed a long time ago, and it's a sin to have children having classrooms in trailers. My feeling is that we have a bunch of bobble-heads up there, yes-ing people to death. It's been pushed to the back burner ... and now it can't be pushed to the back burner anymore."

For two years, the district has fallen short of meeting guidelines set forth by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Candidates shared their views on the issue.

"This school system is good at every level," Kaufman said. "I would just like to see No Child Left Behind abandoned, because it's costing us money, and we're not getting anything out of it."

Haring agreed that the program is ineffective, adding that although the program is mandated, schools do not receive funding for it.

"They don't put their money where their mouth is," Tessler said of the federal government.

According to Tessler, the board needs to work with administrators to see where the schools are falling short. Both Boyd and Speizer said Superintendent of Schools Ralph Ferrie is working to address the problem. Again, Boyd cited planning as an important factor in resolving the issue.

While Chiarella also said the program may not be effective, both he and Bjornsen stated that something must be done. Chiarella proposed researching what other districts are doing in order to improve the district's performance.

"We have to find a way to help these subgroups meet the standards that the federal government set forth," Bjornsen said.