Four vie for three seats on Glen Ridge BOE – Essex News Daily
GLEN RIDGE, NJ — This election season, there are four candidates running for three open seats on the Glen Ridge Board of Education. They are incumbent Tracey St. Auburn and challengers Jocelyn Gottlieb, Duval Graham and Larry Rudman. Current BOE members Alison Lang and Paul Romano chose not to run for reelection.
St. Auburn is running for her third term on the BOE and has lived in Glen Ridge for 27 years, with all four of her children having graduated from Glen Ridge High School — her youngest during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During my many years of service to the schools, I have served as an officer on three Home and School Associations, and I have volunteered my time for projects great and small, including Project Graduation, class parent duties, book fairs, etc.,” St. Auburn told The Glen Ridge Paper. “I feel strongly that the success of our schools depends upon parent involvement and community support. I have been a member of this board for six years, and I am hoping to have the opportunity to continue to serve our district and our students. I feel that the experience and continuity that I bring to the board will be critical during the coming months.”
Gottlieb has lived in Glen Ridge for more than five years, having moved here with her husband and three children from California. She is co-chairperson of the Glen Ridge Association for Special Education and an active member of the Glen Ridge Special Education Parent Advisory Committee.
“My career is in nonprofit management, with a focus on workforce development. Currently, I consult to nonprofits and public agencies to support their efforts in developing job-training programs and workforce strategy,” Gottlieb told The Glen Ridge Paper. “As a trained community mediator, I have experience in listening thoughtfully, engaging in constructive dialogue and reframing conversations. … To ensure that students succeed, the district will continue to develop and implement student Individualized Education Plans for students with specific learning challenges. It will offer enrichment programs and adapted curriculum for students classified as gifted and talented. Finally, the district should look to other school districts and educational research to learn what practices have been effective and consider how these might be adapted to our schools.”
Having moved to Glen Ridge in 2012, Graham currently has two daughters in the school system. In 2013, she became president of the Forest Avenue Home and School Association, which she called a “formative experience.” She also has been a trustee of the Glen Ridge Educational Foundation since 2016.
“Before staying home full-time, I worked for a consumer marketing and PR agency in New York City. I have two daughters in middle school; throughout their school years I have volunteered countless hours,” Graham told The Glen Ridge Paper. “The Glen Ridge School District must continue to nurture its generally positive relationship with the community by listening and taking steps to address the needs and concerns of families.”
Rudman has lived in Glen Ridge since 2014 and currently has a ninth-grader at Glen Ridge High School and a sixth-grader at Ridgewood Avenue School. A graduate of Yale University, Rudman joined Teach for America after college and taught sixth grade in Brooklyn for several years. His interest in education eventually led to him spending approximately a decade building curricula and assessments for schools. For the past 10 years he has worked in applied education research and is the executive director of learning engineering at the College Board.
“I love what I do, but I want to be more involved in making our educational institutions more beneficial to students, and that is why I would like to serve on the Glen Ridge school board,” Rudman told The Glen Ridge Paper. “Having worked in the field of education for more than 20 years, I have seen opportunities to improve our school district. I have seen too many school districts in the United States fail to consider research before adopting new policies or programs. And when little evidence is available, districts miss opportunities to implement evaluation plans to measure the effectiveness of new programs. I see opportunities to promote educational practices that are more consistent with established findings in learning research, and I have developed the habit of thinking about policy changes in terms of how we can reasonably and thoughtfully measure their impact on students.”
When asked what the top issue in the school district is today, St. Auburn highlighted safety.
“The top issue is, of course, the safety and well-being of our staff and students. However, since we are all hoping that we will be returning to ‘normal’ in the not-too-distant future, the board is looking ahead, and we will be continuing to adopt initiatives to address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion,” St. Auburn said. “It will be important for the board to communicate with parents, students, and educators, so that we can address issues, needs, and challenges as they unfold. The board will need to support our administration as it assesses the programs that we have already put in place to support the community, and we will need to revise and modify our plans as we continue to safely expand our school-day offerings. Despite the pressures and concerns we have faced during the pandemic, the board continues to expand academic programs and offerings. We currently have a committee dedicated to addressing issues of diversity and inclusion, and we are supporting the district in efforts to expand the pool of diverse candidates for open positions in the district.”
While Gottlieb acknowledges a number of areas that could see improvement, her main concern this coming school year is handling COVID-19.
“The COVID-19 pandemic overshadows all aspects of the 2020-’21 school year. It necessitates the critical decisions regarding effective implementation of remote instruction and how to keep students and staff safe at school,” she said. “Funding for the upcoming school year will also be affected, and the Board of Education will need to carefully consider how to prioritize the funding still available. As a Board of Education member, I would want to ensure that communication between the district, staff and community is clear, and that there is a thoughtful rationale for each decision made. I would also make sure that we incorporate feedback from the parents and the best available research as we address both instructional and budgeting decisions.”
Graham believes the district’s greatest struggle is public perception that district officials do not adequately communicate with the public.
“Of the numerous weighty issues facing Glen Ridge, including the toll of remote learning, budget constraints, physical and emotional safety of students and staff — I believe the district suffers from a perceived lack of transparency, which, over time, could erode trust,” Graham said. “The district takes pains to communicate critical information and decisions; however, messages are not always getting through. Struggling parents don’t always feel heard. I would like to create another — perhaps less formal — avenue for parents, schools and the BOE to communicate.”
According to Rudman, a top issue — one of personal importance to him — is helping the district better serve all students, especially those enrolled in special education.
“I have seen many dedicated professionals in the district work diligently to address the needs of all students. But because of the complexity of individual student needs and the challenge of formulating IEPs when student-learning challenges do not fit neatly into predefined categories, successfully helping students is not easy to achieve,” he said. “As I think about my own daughter’s IEP and her learning challenges, I think it would be worthwhile to better understand from parents and teachers where we have and haven’t been successful in helping all of our students. As I have noted elsewhere, I think it’s important to know how many and which students have our diagnoses and programs been beneficial to, and to consider in cases where they have not been successful what alternatives we could have considered. The challenges of working with children with IEPs are exacerbated by COVID and distance learning.”
Like all school districts in the area, Glen Ridge’s budget was tight even before the pandemic brought certain unanticipated expenses.
“Our budget will continue to be tight, due to the fact that Glen Ridge does not have a significant number of businesses and we lack adequate support from the state and federal governments,” St. Auburn said. “Each year, our board spends many months crafting a sound, responsible budget. We are focused on providing a quality education for our students, and we are ever mindful of our duty to the taxpayers in Glen Ridge. We continue to be grateful to the community for their support of fundraising efforts that benefit our programs and enrich the offerings in our schools.”
To better balance the budget, Gottlieb recommends smart investments; sometimes the best way to save a lot of money is to spend a little money now.
“I’m a proponent of smart use of taxpayer resources,” Gottlieb said. “By using public resources wisely, we can curtail cost growth. For example, Glen Ridge schools recently invested in upgraded HVAC systems; this reduced year-over-year operating costs and enabled most of our schools to open in spite of the pandemic. The capital expenditure was a strategic investment in the future of our schools and will have other long-term dividends. To stretch our resources, I would look for similar opportunities.”
When asked what she would do if elected to try to help struggling local taxpayers, Graham answered: “I’m not sure this is relevant for Board of Education candidates; we will have to work creatively within existing — and perpetually tight — school budgets to deliver the best educational experience possible to all Glen Ridge students.”
In regard to the budget, Rudman advises that the district better measure program success to determine where taxpayer money would best be spent.
“With limitations on the school budget and a desire to not overburden local taxpayers, I think it’s important for us to ask the measurement and evaluation questions I have noted above with respect to existing school programs and expenses,” Rudman said. “Is every program that the district is implementing delivering on its promise? What benchmarks have we set to know if it is successful? Careful monitoring and questioning — at least a review of historical data if it exists — and planning to capture new data could direct the district to reallocate funds from a program that is not achieving its goals to ones that are. It may push us to invest in less expensive programs to address similar problems, albeit with an evaluation plan in place to judge the impact of the switch.”
School safety takes many forms, both physically and social-emotionally. According to St. Auburn, the most pressing safety concern right now is keeping students and staff healthy from COVID-19.
“Our board has supported the district’s plan for safely reopening the schools while maintaining the quality of our educational experience. Over the summer, teams comprised of educators, parents and students were assembled to tackle every aspect of our reopening strategy. The physical challenges of reopening the schools have been addressed, reassessed and updated. We were able to open our lower schools using a hybrid model, and we are moving to reopen the high school shortly,” St. Auburn said. “We have already implemented a number of initiatives to address the emotional well-being of our community during this ongoing crisis. Tools and resources have been made available to parents, educators and students. These efforts will also need to be honed and reassessed as the challenges continue to unfold. School safety has been an ongoing priority for the board. Before the health crisis, the safety of our school buildings was a concern to the board and the community. The board addressed these safety concerns by installing additional physical barriers and monitoring equipment, and by tightening visitor protocols in all buildings.”
Gottlieb highlighted the importance of mental health support in the schools.
“Ongoing access to emotional support, through counselors, school psychologists and supplemental mental health programs — beginning in third grade — will continue to adapt to the needs of the students,” Gottlieb said. “Related to the pandemic, I would conduct periodic evaluations on the efficacy of the HVAC systems across the district and seek staff feedback on cleaning protocols.”
When it comes to safety, Graham advocated for gathering input and assistance from consultants and community members.
“The district has taken steps to provide students, staff and families extra emotional support and security measures,” Graham said. “I would like to see ongoing evaluations/recommendations from independent safety consultants, as well as tapping into community resources/expertise.”
To best evaluate what safety needs are present in the schools, Rudman suggests talking to the people who are in the school system, either teaching or learning, each day.
“I think it would be helpful to periodically survey students and staff to get a read on what they are thinking and feeling about their learning and working conditions,” Rudman said. “This can help the district monitor changes in students’ and teachers’ perspectives with respect to these issues. In addition to monitoring these attitudes, other school districts have tried to organize circles or advisory sessions where groups of students or teachers or both have directed conversations about important school-related issues.”
The final day to vote in this election is Nov. 3 by 8 p.m. All residents should have received a mail-in ballot, which can be returned via the post, ballot boxes placed throughout the county or, as a last resort, in person at a resident’s polling place.