Name: Marian Raab
Town: Maplewood
Years living in district: 14
Children in district: Two (7th
grader at MMS and 3rd grader at Tuscan)
Occupation: Journalist/Nonpracticing
Attorney
Why do you want to be on the school
board?
As a
parent and as public education advocate, I have been in the trenches for the
last few years fighting for Maplewood and South Orange’s schools and our
children’s right to the best public education possible.
For the
last four years, I have served as local organizer for Save our Schools New
Jersey, a nonpartisan, grassroots, volunteer organization. I have been to
Trenton lobbying our state legislature on education and educational funding
issues. I know our state Assembly representatives Mila Jasey and John McKeon
well and have worked with them both.
Earlier
this year I co-founded a new local group called South Orange/ Maplewood Parents
for a Quality Education. We now have over 600 members on our closed Facebook
page and we are working hard to make positive, parent-led changes in our
schools.
Four years ago, I led
the local opposition to the second application of Hua Mei, the “boutique”
Mandarin-immersion charter school that attempted to open in Maplewood, spending
months in working closely with former district Superintendent Brian Osborne as
well as members of the Board of Education to prevent this charter school from
siphoning millions of dollars from our already cash-strapped school system.
I want to serve on the Board of
Education to use my experience as an education advocate, my experience as a
parent, and my proven ability to make
change happen to work to bring positive change to our children, our schools and
our district.
What is your top priority for the
district?
Team SOMA 2015 and I have 3 top
priorities for the district:
1.
Communication—So
all stakeholders can understand and help develop smarter educational policies.
2.
Common Sense—To
admit when something is not working and change course.
3.
Courage—To ask
the tough questions so we can make sound decisions together as a community.
How would you cut costs without
cutting education?
We as a community must come together
and decide what our educational priorities are. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
said, “A budget is a moral document.” In the last few years, I have been
dismayed to see the Board of Ed cut so many essential and important programs
including outsourcing all of our special education paraprofessionals in a
penny-wise, pound foolish decision.
In addition, I was greatly disturbed
to see our foreign language program recently cut to the bone in elementary
school with only 4th and 5th graders getting minimal
Spanish instruction this year. Meanwhile, our middle school students are offered
only one foreign language – Spanish. At Columbia High School, there have been
reports of many higher level elective courses having very low enrollments. We must
allocate our limited funds very carefully and make the tough decisions about
where we want to spend and where we can find savings that impact the least
number of students.
To that end, Team SOMA 2015 and I would
start our terms on the board by working to bring an independent budget auditor
to go over our nearly $123 million school budget – line by line. When
Maplewoodian.com reports that the town of Maplewood just found “some $2.5
million in revenue” from old accounts, this school board needs to make sure –
and let the public know in an extremely transparent manner – how every dollar
is being spent.
I would use my financial and legal
experience to work with the auditor to release an easy to read (one- or
two-page) spread sheet that breaks down our school budget spending. When more
than 60 percent of our property tax dollars are going to fund this budget,
every South Orange and Maplewood resident has the right to know exactly where
their money is going.
What is your opinion of Dr. John Ramos
and did you support his hiring?
I want our new superintendent to
succeed in his goal to turn this school district from good to great. So far
I’ve been impressed with Dr. Ramos’ willingness to meet with parents and
organize an educational summit in November. It is clear that he understands the
importance of improving district communications.
I was critical of the lack of transparency in the final hiring process
employed by the current board earlier this year as well as the length of superintendent
contract—five years. A hiring decision this important should have had more
stakeholder input in the final decision and more flexibility in its terms for
both the district and the new superintendent. Other school districts release
the name of the final two or three candidates for superintendent before
announcing a decision.
If elected to the Board of Education,
I would look forward to working closely with Dr. Ramos, and the rest of the
board, to move this district into a more transparent era where parents,
teachers and the administration can work together productively for the benefit
of our children.
How will you improve district
communications with residents and parents?
Having worked as a professional
journalist for the last two decades, I bring extremely strong communication
skills to the table. I would use these skills to help the district change its
culture and history of poor communication with parents and the community.
Culture is a key issue here because
our district has an admittedly poor track record of communication with parents.
We can’t expect a fancy new piece of software to immediately change what has
been an ingrained culture of communication mistakes and failures. Changing the
culture starts at the top—with the Board of Ed.
While researching how other school
boards operate, I learned that some New Jersey districts—such as the Verona
Board of Ed.—actively engages in discussions with the community at its meetings
and so far this hasn’t resulted in anarchy! If enough of our board members want
to, they CAN engage in meaningful dialogue with parents at school board
meetings. It is beyond frustrating to watch as our current board sits in its
horseshoe, stone-faced and completely silent at meeting after meeting while
scores of angry and unhappy parents testify to a litany of serious issues and
problems in our district.
Even if a the board decides not to
respond to a question or concern during its public speaks portions of the
meetings, the polite, respectful way to handle the situation is to at least say
that the board will discuss the issue and get back to the individual at a later
date, or direct them to the appropriate person to respond to the query.
Should the board increase to two
meetings per month to avoid late actions?
Yes! This is one of Team SOMA 2015’s
main practical platform points. Almost
every school district in our surrounding area meets twice a month. Our school
board cannot effectively govern this district when meetings start 30 to 60
minutes late and then stretch into the next day. I was one of the few members of the public still left
in the audience when the current board voted at almost 1:00 a.m. this past
spring to remove the failed International
Baccalaureate program from the middle
schools. Decisions of this importance should never, ever be voted on past the
midnight hour.
Two
board meetings a month will help ensure that the community can be present and
more involved when important policy and fiscal decisions are made.
What would you do to reduce the number
of standardized tests for our students such as NJ ASK and PARCC?
I have already been working
closely with Save Our Schools NJ as well as state and national opt-out groups
to reduce the number of high-stakes, standardized tests that students are
pressured or required to take. I believe that our students are more than a test
score and opted my oldest son out of PARCC testing last year.
Last
Spring, I worked with Save Our Schools NJ to get the New Jersey Assembly and
Senate to overwhelmingly approve S2881/A4485 -- legislation that prohibits the
state Department of Education from withholding aid to districts based on
student participation rates on PARCC. The legislation is waiting for Governor
Christie’s signature.
There’s
a lot of misinformation out there about PARCC refusal rates and school funding.
The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law included a mandate that required
schools to have a 95 percent participation rate on state tests or face
sanctions. But missing the 95 percent participation rate at the school level
has not been unusual in New Jersey. In fact, some 16 percent of eligible
students in the South Orange-Maplewood district ultimately opted out of PARCC
last spring, including 40 percent of Columbia High School students.
And
no federal financial penalties related to Title I instructional funds have been
imposed on any New Jersey school for missing that participation rate. The US
Department of Education recently acknowledged
publicly that no such penalties
would be imposed.
How would you change math placement in
the upper grades?
The district’s math placement process
is broken at the beginning—in 5th grade where students become hyper-aware about the impending ranking they will be
given in June. This ranking, which will determine where they will be placed in
6th grade math, is not an accurate assessment of student knowledge
and is not working, as numerous parents testified in front the board last
spring.
To add insult to injury,
the lowest level of middle school math is called “College Prep,” which is a
misleading and almost Orwellian description of a level that will never allow a
student to take calculus or high level science courses in high school. While I
approve of the spirit of the board’s new Access & Equity policy, many
questions remain on how we will successfully implement – and fund – the “age-appropriate academic supports for access
to advanced-level courses” the new policy describes.
It is important to note that the district already
has a “Contract for Choice” policy on its books that allows students and their
parents to decide to try to move up to a higher level course. Unfortunately,
the district appears to not have been following OR communicating its current
policy to parents and students.
There have been many complaints about
team coaches being dismissed, how would you make sure fairness is exercised in
such hirings and firings?
Fairness should be exercised in all district hirings and firings. That
said, some of the most painful and uncomfortable moments I experienced watching
the last year of board meetings was when scores of Columbia students athletes
and their parents addressed the board about coaches being dismissed at the high
school.
It’s clear we’ve been having serious issues
in regard to bullying and harassment on some CHS sports teams. As a
nonpracticing attorney I would use my legal knowledge to help prevent such
incidents from occurring in the future. The board of education should review
the process by which such complaints are filed and processed. The board has
stated that our in-house counsel has been working on a policy manual for all
coaches in the district. That is a good first step to addressing these issues,
but I fear the problem is more ingrained and entrenched than one new policy
manual can address.
It is the Board of Education’s responsibility to ensure that the
district has employment policies in place that clearly defines how incidents
such as these are investigated and how all parties are informed of the results. No student—whether a member of a sports team
or not—should ever feel threatened, intimidated, bullied or harassed by anyone
in our schools.
Anything else you want to say?
Please check out our web site www.soma2015.com for more information and how to support Team
SOMA 2015.
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