Name: Margaret
(Peggy) Freedson, Ed.D.
Town: South
Orange
Years living in district: 10
Children in district: My daughter, Ava, is a 3rd
grader at South Mountain Elementary, and my son, Sammy, is in 10th
grade at CHS
Occupation: I
am an education professor and teacher educator at Montclair State University. My specialization is language arts literacy
education.
Why
do you want to be on the school board?
With both of my children in district schools, and as
a professional educator with 25 years of focus on public school teaching,
literacy and educational equity, I am running for the BOE because I want to see
teaching excellence in every one of our classrooms. I have seen progress in
recent years. But I also see ongoing needs for improvement. I believe we need
to strengthen board oversight of curriculum quality, and better support
development of critical knowledge and skills in our elementary and middle
schools that will prepare every student to find their success in high school. I think having the voice and perspective of a
professional educator with expertise in curriculum and teaching on the board is
important. I am ready put my long experience as a teacher educator to work, joining
my highly qualified running mates Wayne Eastman and Madhu Pai, to help bring
continued positive change to the district.
What is your top priority for the
district?
My top priority is continuing to improve the quality
of the everyday classroom experiences of all students in the context of the new
Access and Equity policy that I hope will be adopted this month. To help bring our schools from good to great,
I will focus on:
§ Making
our district a destination for top-notch teachers and doing a better job to
retain and recognize the great teaching talent we already have. This will begin with promoting a culture of
collaboration that gives teachers a greater say in curriculum planning and
decision-making.
§ Ensuring
that we have in place in our elementary and middle schools a content-rich and rigorous
curriculum with more science and social studies in elementary school, greater
alignment with grade-level standards, and more immersive research projects that
will foster interest in and love of learning. I am particularly committed to
improving the teaching of writing across K-12.
§ Successful
implementation of the Access and Equity policy. This will require a wide range
of measures that will need to include clear definition of course content by
level, improved communication with families regarding programs and course
options, and enhanced supports for student learning with more differentiated
instruction.
How would you cut costs without
cutting education?
It is important to understand that the BOE does not
create the school budget nor does it vote on individual line items in the
budget. Instead, the role of the BOE is
to establish district goals and to ensure that the administration is engaged in
an effective budget development process.
The BOE does vote on the aggregate amount of the school budget. The
BOE’s vote on the total budget amount allows the BOE to control the local
property tax burden on our residents.
Wayne, Madhu and I understand that Maplewood and
South Orange’s taxes are already a major stress in our community. We will therefore vote to establish
clearly-focused district goals and to keep the school budget tax increases to
2% or less. From my professional expertise in training teachers to support
students of diverse backgrounds and learning needs, I am knowledgeable about
ways to strengthen curriculum and teaching that are most likely to impact
student learning without incurring additional costs. As a board member, I will press the
administration to utilize these best practices and innovative solutions to
improve learning outcomes that are cost neutral. Additionally, the BOE should prioritize
continuing Jeff Bennett’s work to increase state funding.
What is your opinion of Dr. John
Ramos and did you support his hiring?
I was very encouraged by the hiring of Dr. Ramos in
a unanimous vote by our current Board under the leadership of Wayne and
Madhu. I believe Dr. Ramos has a strong
sense of the amazing diversity of our community, is a skilled communicator, and
is very quickly coming to understand what we need moving forward. I am pleased
by the approach he has articulated for balancing big-picture vision and
innovation with attention to the basics of everyday district management and responsiveness.
I am also encouraged by what seems his disposition to really listen to
community members, having set up multiple forums this fall for parents and
residents to share their views, but to do this with his sights set on planning
for action on a short time-line. I would look forward to working with him.
How will you improve district
communications with residents and parents?
I
think that the single most important role of a BOE member is to listen and
respond to community members. That means hearing not only those who speak out
publicly or reach out in writing to voice concerns, but establishing trust and
communication with members of our community who speak out rarely or not at all.
The online portal - Let’s Talk - is
an exciting initiative that has opened new channels of communication between
the community and the administration to help ensure greater responsiveness, and
the results I am hearing of anecdotally are encouraging. There is no
replacement for personal contact, however – board members spending time
regularly at school and community events, talking to parents and hearing from
people face to face. I would look
forward to holding regular office hours when parents and residents can share
their concerns in direct conversation.
Should the board increase to two
meetings per month to avoid late actions?
I don’t believe this is the right solution. The
Board needs to fulfill its mandate while operating with respect for everyone’s
time. I will advocate for new solutions
to ensure that all stakeholder groups have more opportunities to engage in
productive discussions with board members. I will also push for to ensure that issues
or actions of a controversial nature are addressed earlier in evening during
public BOE meetings for the highest level of transparency.
What would you do to reduce the
number of standardized tests for our students such as NJ ASK and PARCC?
I was gratified to learn that this past May the
PARCC governing board voted to reduce the spring administration of the PARCC
standardized tests from two weeks to one, and reduced the overall testing time
by 90 minutes. This response to the concerns of educators and parents will
allow us to still accomplish what I believe to be the goals of testing while
limiting the time taken away from everyday teaching and learning.
Standardized tests like
NJASK have been instrumental in bringing to light key achievement gaps in our
own district and in districts across the country, so I believe standardized
tests have an important role to play in keeping us accountable for student
learning and in monitoring equity. That said, I soundly reject any narrowing of
our curriculum towards test-like tasks, or “teaching to the test” beyond a few sessions
of preparation in test-taking strategies that have been shown to help allay
children’s anxieties around testing. I also support parents’ right to opt their
children out of testing.
How would you change math placement
in the upper grades?
I think the new Access and Equity policy will bring
a much needed reset to the process by which students are placed for math. Under
this new policy, while the district may continue to recommend math placements
based on available data on prior student performance, it will be parents,
together with their children and drawing on their deep knowledge of their
child’s strengths and motivations, who will determine that placement. Critical
to the implementation of this policy will be a coming together of the entire
math department for grades 6-12 to clarify the content and expectations for
each course and level, and to bring greater transparency to the process of
recommending placements.
There have been many complaints about
team coaches being dismissed, how would you make sure fairness is exercised in
such hirings and firings?
I look forward to seeing more clear definition of
policy clarifying the rules and expectations for coaches, including their hiring
and firing, so that there will be fewer of these issues moving forward. Like Mr. Eastman, I am hopeful that the
steady leadership of Dr. Ramos will help move us through and beyond the
controversies surrounding members of our coaching staff.
Anything
else you want to say?
I
believe we are at a true turning point for our district. I understand that in the coming years we will
be working under severe fiscal constraints and will have to set priorities to
work with limited resources. Within this environment, we must make policy decisions
most likely to positively impact the quality of our curriculum, teaching, and student
learning, and we must ensure that the new Access and Equity policy is
successfully implemented. The team of Pai, Eastman, Freedson, of which I am so
excited to be a part, will bring a depth of experience and expertise to the board
that is needed, perhaps now more than ever, to accomplish these goals. I
encourage everyone to learn more about our team, to read a detailed overview of
our platform at http://www.boe2015.com, and to vote for Madhu
Pai, Wayne Eastman, and Margaret (Peggy) Freedson on November 3rd.
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