SUSIE ADAMSON

Name: Susie Adamson

Age: 47 (in a few weeks!)

Town: South Orange

Current employment: Realtor®, Keller Williams Midtown Direct

Past public service: Seth Boyden PTA President & Board Member for 8 years, Outdoor Learning Center Committee Member, Presidents’ Council Co-President and Board Member for 4 years, Achieve Foundation Liaison, Strategic Action Plan Team Member, SOMS HSA Board Member – Communications Coordinator, Prospect Preschool Board Member, leadership positions at various churches; Mothers & More Project Leader

What are your three top priorities for the school district if elected? 

●     Implementation: Getting the fundamentals of implementation right is foundational to everything we hope to accomplish in our district. I will make sure that for every initiative we implement there is a more thoughtful planning process that includes all stakeholders. Effective implementation considers all of the necessary conditions for success -- including the system’s capacity for change, the timing and pacing of the roll-out, as well as appropriate and sufficient training and support needed for success. In addition, we need (clearer) actionable metrics (measures) and more thorough analysis of results to be able to roll out or scale back.

●     Communication: I will focus on creating more consistent, proactive communications and more timely, honest recognition of missteps – this will go a long way toward garnering the trust and goodwill of the community.  In addition, better communication and collaboration across key stakeholder groups – administration, faculty/staff, parents, students, BOE, and other community members – focusing on our common goals, will allow our community to apply our vast array of resources on generating more innovative solutions.  

●     Unrelenting focus on improving the achievement gap – there is no excuse, particularly in this community, for not moving the needle on this more significantly for the benefit of all of our students.

How do you think Dr. John Ramos has done in his first year as superintendent? What could he do better?

I agree with several of the foundational ideas that Dr. Ramos established early on:

●     We are one school district, not a district of schools

●     We need to rethink how we deliver education to our students, given our financial limitations and the dramatic changes in our world

●     We need to work together, tap into our collective expertise & experience to drive change, with ownership and consensus

I am convinced of his commitment to the well-being and success of our students, as his greatest priority.

I appreciate his thoughtful approach, willingness to acknowledge mistakes, and tempered tone.

In my conversations over time with him, I have been somewhat impatient with his learning curve in identifying the many executional gaps in our system. In this first year, I think that he has taken more of a 10,000-foot-view of the administration than (a) we are accustomed to; (b) our District requires, given its size and paucity of supervisory resources.

How should the district handle the PARCC testing in the future if it becomes more of a mandated requirement?

Along with many members of our community, the misuse of standardized testing troubles me. Standardized testing is not going away and there is a need to prepare our students to test well – for SATs, AP tests, graduate school tests, etc. However, we should push back on the requirements that push our District to use the PARCC results as a factor in teacher evaluations, class level assignments and high school graduation. We should scrutinize how exactly the results can inform us and clearly communicate to teachers, parents, and students how the data is being used.

How would you help the district improve its communication with the community?

As I’ve stated before, this is a key area of focus for me and will continue to be, whether or not I am elected to the Board.

Let’s Talk is a good step toward providing a clearer channel for reaching the right person for a particular question, issue, etc. It also provides the administration with the ability to hold staff members accountable for response times and content, and to track common themes. We need to take the next steps of using this tool – what happens next? What recourse is there when community members do not receive timely, satisfactory responses? How are we learning from common themes?

We need to make communications a far greater priority in this District by incorporating it in the measures of success for the Administration and staff. The successful development and implementation of curriculum and programs is intricately tied to the clear and effective communications of these efforts to the community.

How would you help improve the achievement gap?

The problem of the achievement gap is a confounding and persistent one and one for which educators have yet to find the definitive solution.

Having said that, my research leads me to recommend the following:

●     Bias training for all teachers – we ALL have bias, how can we guard against having our biases affect the teaching and discipline of our students

●     Deeper data analysis to more precisely identify how and where students are falling behind and targeting additional resources to help them catch up – e.g., equitable distribution of resources to ensure that ALL students are reading at grade level by 3^rd grade and shoring up out-of-school supports for at-risk students

●     Understanding why students leave the district and develop supports for students as they enter our district

●     Better alignment of resources with need across our schools

How do you see racial issues in the district given the concerns by some African-American students at CHS that assigning a police officer to the school would have been a mistake?

The uncomfortable truth is that despite our community’s embrace of its diversity, there are clearly persistent racial issues in and out of our schools. As Hillary Clinton said in the recent Presidential debate, “…[I]mplicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police… Too many of us jump to conclusions about each other… We need all of us to be asking hard questions about why am I feeling this way…”

We need to ask these hard questions of our families, students, and staff. We must push ourselves to have uncomfortable conversations and listen to each other if we are to realize the promise of our diverse community.

Encouraging our students to confront and grapple with the complexity of racial tensions while they are young and in the relatively “safe” confines of our schools is a gift that will serve them well as they head out into the broader community.

How would you handle the expected enrollment increases that are already sparking some overcrowding given the budget constraints that forced the cutting of 11 teaching positions?

Again, this is why we need to be open to aggressively innovative solutions across the board – from our facilities usage to seat time to scheduling to purchasing to technology and so on. How we distribute our students across our buildings, at what time(s), in what configuration … is all on the table and needs to be considered. We need thoughtful, creative solutions.

We also need to work better with our elected town officials to discuss the effects of development and tax abatements. I am optimistic that we can work more effectively with our towns, given the importance of our schools to the health and (growth) vitality of our community.

What is your position on contracting out services vs. in-district staffing?

There should be no singular position on this. Whether or not to use in-district or contracted services must always be considered within the broader context of the fiscal situation, the needs being addressed, and the overall best interest of the students. Keeping services in-district typically has the advantage of greater control over quality and accountability. However, there may be areas of expertise that are more effectively and/or efficiently represented outside of our resources.

Again, whenever decisions are made about how needs are to be met – whether through in-district or outsourced resources – I would question the motives of the approach, clearly identify the measures of success, ensure that players are given the tools they need, and promote clear communication to the community throughout.

How do you think the district handled the CHS baseball coach controversy over alleged HIB incidents?

This continues to be a painful, fraught episode in the life of this District. Parties on both sides have presented compelling emotional public statements.

Once again, while tension and dissatisfaction on one side or another was unavoidable, it seems undeniable that the process could have been managed more efficiently, mitigating some of the frustration and outrage that has been expressed and the trust that has been eroded.

I would encourage the Administration to acknowledge the ways in which it has learned from this rather public HIB case and communicate to the community how we will more effectively resolve these incidents in the future, more vigorously protecting each side in the process.