PLATFORM
Three years ago, you trusted me to stand up for Brick students and I have been working tirelessly to accomplish the goals I set out with. Since then, I have been through countless hours of meetings, professional development, and have read numerous books that helped me grow as a board member. Now I have some new goals for our children's education.
"I am an advocate for children's rights! Their right to love school they way we did when we were younger; to be educated the way that science has proven is best for them; to provide classes in what they want to learn and how they want to learn it; to be treated fairly by their teachers and administrators."
Fighting For Our State Funding
Testimony handed to the State Senate on March 10, 2020:
During the budget process of my first year on the board, three years ago, our superintendent asked our school administrators to provide the board with a wish list. They presented us with a document and a power point outlining the personnel, curriculum supports, facility upgrades and materials they needed to better educate our students. Sadly, as with all budget processes, we weren’t able to get them everything on their lists.
We weren’t able to get a second behaviorist to better support the staff with our special needs students. We weren’t able to hire an administrator to oversee the humanities department or one to oversee the sciences. We weren’t able to replace worn out classroom furniture. The list goes on. We had to prioritize facility repairs, as we fixed roofs, boilers, and pothole ridden parking lots.
My fellow board members and I were disappointed that we couldn’t get the students what we knew they needed and did our best over the past two years to get them an administrator (to share) and another behaviorist, but those classrooms still need furniture, 3 years later.
Since S2 has resulted in Brick schools losing our gap funding, we haven’t asked for wishlists from our administrators, only cuts. Cuts in staff: 70 positions so far, cuts in materials, cuts in curriculum costs, and cuts in facilities improvements. We have even been forced to close schools and drastically increase classroom sizes. Our teachers who are already working hard to plan and assess the physical, social emotional, and cognitive growth of our students are now also forced to fill out grant applications or hope their wishlists on Twitter get paid for by philanthropists so their classroom environments can be supplied with the dynamic furniture arrangements they desire. As board members, we don’t even know what their current wishlists might include.
Being a board member after S2 is not about deciding what improvements we can make to best support our students or prioritizing needs on wishlists, it’s about deciding what our students can live without. Can we still provide a thorough and efficient education without air conditioning? Can they still learn if they are not safe because we can’t afford the security upgrades our schools need? Can we still provide a well rounded education when parents have to pay for their children to participate in sports? Are after school bussing services necessary? Which AP classes can we cut? Can children still learn when classroom sizes increase above 30? How about 35? 40? Where is the line in the sand that says that this is no longer a thorough and efficient education? How many cuts can we make before we thoroughly and efficiently fail our kids?
As Brick schools stand today we are already providing care to our students well below adequacy. The state of NJ says that our district should be spending $11,975 per pupil to provide an adequate education and yet Brick is shown to be $5,559,317 under adequacy. Now each year as we lose more adjustment aid, and as the cost to educate children rises, we will be spending less. With tax increases capped at 2% and no more bank cap to use, we will never recoup the $24 million loss in state funding, and our district will drop further below adequacy.
How can the state of NJ justify making a decision that will negatively impact student learning, not only here in Brick, but anywhere in our state where districts don’t have enough funding to reach adequacy? Every student struggling to learn in an underfunded district where the board of education’s hands are tied, is being funded inequitably to the students in districts who can meet or exceed their adequacy figures. All children deserve to go to schools that provide them with a thorough and efficient education. If the state of NJ says districts need to spend $11,975 per student and they also make it impossible for districts to reach that amount, then they are saying that inequity is not only allowed in NJ, it is mandated.
Foundational Knowledge
In this age of the internet and cellphones, it seems natural to assume that children no longer need to memorize historical facts or retain a strong foundational knowledge in any subject. When we don't know something, we can just look it up, right?
The Knowledge Gap, by Natalie Wexler, taught me just how wrong that idea was. In the book, she explained with this example. Researchers asked children of varying reading levels to reenact a story about baseball game with wooden pegs and a model baseball diamond. Researchers expected children with high reading levels to do well and lower reading levels not to be able to complete the task. It turned out, the children with background knowledge of baseball actually scored best.
Children need strong foundational knowledge in subjects like social studies and science in order to become more effective readers of all texts, both fiction & non-fiction. If kids don't know what the story is about and have to do a ton of research just to understand the historical context of say, what the turn of the century was like in NYC, they can never fully appreciate the joy of reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. I would like Brick public schools to carve out time in the school day, every day, for both subjects so our kids can become not only more dedicated scientists and historians but also better readers.
Social Emotional Support
Brick schools have been enacting some effective changes to their Social Emotional Skills curriculum, dedicating class time to implement circle practices, mindfulness & yoga instruction. I love the direction our district is taking but I would still like to see those Behavior Charts removed from our classroom walls for good. Not only do our children waste precious time in the classroom and at home obsessing about what color they and their classmates are on, the charts also don't teach children about how to behave respectfully. In an age where children's social skills are poorly developed due to lack of play & recess, overuse of technology, and over scheduled families, I would like Brick administrators take a firm stand to remove them. I don't believe that they are a healthy part of our classroom environments.
Play
Let’s bring play back to early childhood education. "Play for young children is not recreation activity, it is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity. Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met." -James L. Hymes
I want to bring play/choice time back to our elementary education curriculum. Through the implementation of dynamic Reading, Writing, and Math Workshop style instruction models, children should have access to educational materials, like blocks, dramatic play centers, loose parts, tinkering supplies, and board games. As children break into small groups to act out stories, build models of ancient cities, or engage in a competitive game of Quirkle, the children will deepen their knowledge, improve their social skills, and apply their learning.
Outdoor Classrooms
Several Brick schools already have amazing aquaponic gardens that are shared across our district. Hopefully, we can get more grant funding to put Edible Schoolyards at every school. Now, with the coronavirus, it's especially important to give children extra opportunities to hone their Science Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) skills outdoors.
Additionally, I would love to see more STEAM skill building, loose parts on our playgrounds. Materials like outdoor blocks, gutters, PVC pipes, small balls, milk crates, and much more could be added to our recess materials to allow kids to design and build complex systems making recess time more engaging for our budding engineers.