ANNEMARIE MAINI QUESTIONNAIRE

Name:  Annemarie Maini

Town:  South Orange

Years living in district: 11

Children in district:  One child at South Orange Middle School, one child now at boarding school, who attended district schools through ninth grade.

Occupation:  Former banking executive, now Director of South Orange Country Day School, a Montessori pre-school in South Orange.

Why do you want to be on the School Board?

We have lots of successes in our schools from the efforts of the many talented and committed teachers and principals who give their all every day. But the successes are increasingly outweighed by the inability of our school district to consistently meet the needs of its students, to make all children feel welcome and to help them discover that they can, through persistence, curiosity and self-reflection become successful lifelong learners.

I am running to make our schools into places where all students feel safe every day – physically and emotionally. We can make all our students confident and successful learners. We can restore parents’ trust in our school district. We can succeed if we harness the energy, enthusiasm and talent of everyone in our wonderful community.

We need to put the needs of children first in every interaction, action and decision.  To get it done, we need leadership, a determination to get it right in the interests of all our kids and a commitment to do it together, however hard it may seem to build the consensus we need. I want to help make that happen.

What is your top priority for the district?

Our district's top priority must be engaging, challenging and enabling growth for every student – from struggling learners to high achievers, from disaffected students to those with special needs, and especially the forgotten middle. Doing so requires paying attention to the specific needs of every student and providing teachers with the instructional leadership and practical supports they need to sustain such efforts. 

Such an approach to engagement is key to closing the persistent and well-documented racial achievement gap, which is an indicator of a deeper, district-wide problem of ineffective approaches to engagement, a problem that transcends race and impacts all students. 

How would you cut costs without cutting education?

We must end the district's perpetual budget crisis. Our schools are essential to the long-term vitality of our towns. We first need to take a hard and transparent look at the budget and reexamine if spending is aligned to the priorities of the district. We need to understand if we have considered spending alternatives and if we are maximizing the use of – and getting return on -- existing resources. It is likely that we are not achieving the greatest operational efficiencies and return with our existing budget and through the current budgeting process. Importantly, holding the line on taxes requires more than just adopting a tax target in September and then accepting with little question the Administration's budget proposal In March.  There must be a collaborative and public budgeting process that is timely, fully informed and transparent throughout.

In some cases, we may need to make hard choices, but we should only do so after we have explored whether or not we are already making the best and most impactful budget choices.

Beyond maximizing the budget that we have now, we must face the realities that there will be a "new normal" of high enrollment. The Board must establish an effective, long-term planning process that lays the basis for additional operational efficiencies, takes into account the anticipated high enrollment, and manages facilities and capital spending over a 20-year horizon.

No local school budget can be managed over the long term without taking the state funding model into account. We need to build effective alliances with communities across the state to force the next governor and legislature to fully fund NJ's school aid formula, targeting 10-20% increases in our district's state aid for several years to come.

What is your opinion of Dr. John Ramos and did you support his hiring?

Dr. Ramos appears energetic, focused and he clearly has experience that can serve us well. The Board will play a critical role in ensuring his successful transition in a way that allows us to benefit from his expertise and vision to address the most pressing issues in our district. 

It will also be important that the Board exercise its oversight authority to ensure more effective leadership by the Superintendent than we may have had in the past, enable more effective management by all principals and program leaders, and guarantee more timely, relevant reporting and accountability.

How will you improve district communications with residents and parents?

I support Dr. Ramos in fulfilling his recent promise that all inquiries from parents receive an initial response within 48 hours and that nothing slips through the cracks. Also, the proposed technology platforms look promising and may aid in providing a consistent framework. In addition, we must expand information on the district website, to ensure that it contains timely, complete and easily searchable information on a well-defined list of topics, with that list reviewed annually by the Board and parent representatives, including the elementary Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs), middle and high school Home and School Associations (HSAs) and the Special Education Parent Advisory Council (SEPAC), and our Guidance and Social Worker departments.

I support his proposal to leverage appropriate technology to improve communications and to track parent concerns. But, technology platforms are not enough. We also need to establish a defined, proactive communications process that is aligned to district priorities, tracks and reports progress against milestones, and documents ongoing concerns.

District communications to families, students and the community must provide complete transparency and full disclosure for parents on decisions that affect their children -- district policies, placement criteria and the academic and disciplinary decision-making processes. The real issue -- and where we need to improve -- is in building relationships between parents and district administrators and staff.

Should the Board increase to two meetings per month to avoid late actions?

Before we explore increasing the number of meetings, we need to focus on creating a more effective and efficient structure for the existing meetings. This includes establishing an agenda that allows the most critical issues to be debated and voted on while those watching are still awake.

The Board needs to insist that the Superintendent and his leadership team deliver presentations that are to-the-point and present all the alternatives considered in arriving at a recommendation.

That said, a key element in improving Board meetings is addressing the underlying concerns and frustrations that lead so many parents to utilize the Public Speaks opportunity at the start of Board meetings, which run for an hour or more sometimes. 

What would you do to reduce the number of standardized tests for our students such as NJ ASK and PARCC?

Testing has its place, but not onerous testing that is poorly aligned to what our students are learning.

We need to empower and motivate teachers to create instructional approaches that engage and challenge every student, that build on the best elements of the Common Core standards and instructional best-practices, but which have, as their top priority, stimulating students' curiosity to make them self-motivated learners.

We need meaningful measures of what EACH child is learning and if EACH child is making progress. That’s what sensible standardized tests would do, in a way that informs instruction for teachers, builds community confidence in our schools and demonstrates to state regulators that we are meeting the needs of every child.

We need to build an effective statewide coalition of parents and educators who will work to take the control for education from legislators and put it back in hands of educators. This is important both in terms of ensuring proper funding for our district from the state, but also in regard to empowering our district to do what is best for students.

How would you change math placement in the upper grades?

The foundational work for success in mathematics begins in elementary and middle school. Merely focusing on placement in the upper grades will not lead to success if we don’t do more to address the math curriculum and standards, as well as close gaps at the lower levels. Moving forward, we need to do much more to intervene and ensure success well before children enter the upper grades.  All teachers responsible for math instruction through the elementary schools must be supported and mentored to confidently guide students through multiple approaches to problem solving.  Teachers also need to be supported to balance any potential accommodations for students with the need to get through material.  A child who relies on a factor chart for multiplication should be allowed to use the factor chart for fraction work, as an example. 

With that said we need to open access in ways that will prevent the arbitrary placement of kids who have potential, yet miss the cut off for a class by a couple of points. Placement needs to take other factors into account that are more complete indicators of an individual child’s capabilities and motivations. 

In addition, we need to institute earlier parental notification on regarding placement recommendations and a transparent mapping of what that placement means going forward.   Our course labels need to be representative of the content of the course.

It is important to establish effective and timely Board oversight to ensure that the district uses more cohesive, transparent and fair approaches for assessing the progress of each child.  Such an approach would use varied and meaningful measurements -- not just a single high-stakes test -- to inform instruction, promote student growth, and foster parental confidence that all students are being challenged to the full extent of their abilities, as well as drive appropriate placement recommendations.

There have been many complaints about team coaches being dismissed, how would you make sure fairness is exercised in such hirings and firings?

There has been some tension among students, parents, coaches and the administration regarding some of our coaches. The Board needs to use policy to set expectations for the goals of our high school sports programs and the norms of behavior expected from coaches. Annual evaluations of coaches must be based on input from multiple administrators, not just the athletic director.

Athletics can play an important role in the lives of many students. Sports have the potential to complement academics and help students become more focused in achieving their goals.  Coaches, like teachers, have the ability to be positive guiding influences on our students (Coach Power, Football, for instance, seeks students out in the hallways to inquire on how they are doing, arranges his schedule around when students are available to work out (6am sometimes), and also follows up when he hasn’t seen someone in a while),  and we need to do more to make sure that experience is consistent from sport to sport and year to year. 

For example, is there an expectation that programs are intended to be inclusive and participatory, or should there be tryouts? How are academic standards for participation enforced to meet the best interests of our children? Currently, there is no agreement on these and other points. We need to create a framework with input from students, parents and coaches – and teachers – that will foster positive “rules of engagement” and build a more collaborative approach that balances participation, academic success, respect and access that is understood and respected by all.

Those who participate in sports at Columbia are student-athletes and we must make sure that all coaches recognize and support the primary mission in our district of providing our children with an excellent educational experience.

Anything else you want to say?

 As we look to move forward we must regain the trust of parents. Dr. Ramos has mentioned a few times that this is the first time he has worked in a district that has a “support group” for every issue.  These "support groups” were formed by parents who have been exasperated by their lack of progress in trying to navigate the school system.  By reaching out to other families, they realize that their child's issues or concerns are not unique and also impact many children and families.  Our community has adapted to support families and share information on how to navigate our schools through these groups.  It shouldn’t have to be this difficult.
Only by rebuilding trust with our families, students, and teachers can we move forward; trust is the foundation for all other changes, and will help us achieve our long-term vision.
This will take more than a communication plan or a better website.  We have to demonstrate in action that the district has basic competence -- to keep our buildings secure, to maintain the grounds through the seasons, to have workable student schedules ready on the first day of school, to have evaluation and placement processes done in a transparent and timely way, to keep parents fully informed about what's going on with their kids, to make our schools welcoming enough that kids really want to go to school every day.
We have to walk the walk before we try to talk the talk.