Board of Education Candidates Promote their Positions at Community Forum

With the Board of Education elections just 12 days away, the four candidates promoted their positions at a community forum at Pelham Memorial High School on Wednesday night. In addition to sharing their reasons for running for the two available seats, Marianne Gilland, Will Cavangh, Ted Howard and Lester Kravitz responded to pressing community concerns.

Looking down the road, what would you point to as measures of success?

Ted Howard: I would like to say, making everybody happy, but that’s going to be challenging. I would like to continue to cut where we can, while keeping the quality of the education. I would like our kids to get into better colleges—more Ivy League schools when they graduate from here. [I would also like to] get the AP courses nailed down, extending them and making them available.

Lester Kravitz: [I want to work on] maintaining and improving the educational system and test scores. We need to streamline the financial process as much as possible and continue to attract top educators and administrators.

Will Cavanagh: My main focus was kids in the middle. We put a strategic plan in place 5 years ago, and that was one of the major focuses. We’ve expanded our AP course offering. You can take AP statistics, it doesn’t have to be calculus. We created a summer program, so that [more students] can take APs.   [We need to] meet our fiscal challenges. We’re the fourth lowest [when it comes to] per pupil spending in Westchester, and that’s something we will continue.

Marianne Gilland: I want to eliminate the word “rigor” from our vocabulary. It’s harsh and unyielding. I don’t think that APs are the be all and end all. I think that we want to work on marketing our kids better. I don’t think the college profile really makes them look like they are as hard working as they really are. Even though we don’t rank, we do have deciles. I do think that we just need more public input on these things. I’ve looked at other districts where there are more open forums. I would like to see us do more of that.

How can the board be accessible to the community? Is there room for improvement?

TH: There could be better communication. I must say that we do meet twice a month. We’re there every other Monday, and there’s ample opportunity for people to speak their mind. We’re just going to be thinking of ways to communicate better. Come on out. It’s pretty quiet sometimes.

LK: If you send an email, I will respond. If you call me, I will answer. I think the community should feel at ease.

WC: We have all our meetings on the website, and we hope to go live very soon. We had a community forum and people gave us a lot of good ideas. We now bring students to board meetings. It’s nice to be able to see what students are doing. Last night we had the ballroom dancing team from the Hutchinson School and they all got up there and did a presentation. That’s part of our community engagement.

MG: I do think that there needs to be more accessibility. I do think that there needs to be more parent committees. The meetings are a little perfunctory. We don’t have enough time in an hour to discuss the issues. The last meeting was not very well attended. Other avenues need to be pursued to get more involvement. One district has a rumor mill—if you hear a rumor, you could email it and they would post it. There are many aspects where some improvement needs to be made.

What do you think about the level of stress in the schools?

TH: I guess I’m of two minds. There seems to be a lot of stress. Kids work hard. [But] the United States ranks something like 39^th in education in the world. I don’t know if there are any hard figures on that. There’s that old saying—just because you’re busy, doesn’t mean you’re successful. Maybe we need to examine better what it is that we’re making our kids do. It needs to be examined to make sure they’re working at things that make them successful.

LK: Rigor is important, but students shouldn’t be killing themselves to get a higher grade. Not everybody is going to get an A. The goal is to raise happy people. Vacation should be as homework free as much as possible.

WC: They’re all overbooked. Who’s responsible? In part, we’re responsible. We’re pushing them into travel soccer and band practices. They get home at 10 p.m. and start homework at 11 p.m. after an hour of Facebook. That’s a serious concern. A family has to help their children find the right balance. It comes down to very individual decisions.

MG: One of things that made the college process competitive was the huge demographics—I think that until the colleges start to change what the requirements are, it’s not really going to change for our kids. Our homework policy has minimums stated, not maximums. I think that has to be included—no homework over break.

What is your opinion on the ?

TH: I am against the cap. I believe in a free market. The town is our cap. The town decides what they want and what they don’t want and that’s how it should be. It shouldn’t come down from Albany. It should be up to us in Pelham. It could be devastating. We don’t spend a lot already on students. It could mean bigger classes, and that’s not what the town wants. I think we should work towards getting it as low as possible, but I don’t think anyone should tell me what it is.

LK: I don’t know if it’s constitutional for Albany to implement a tax cap. It’s a very delicate issue. We cant be General Motors on one hand. On the other hand, to say that arbitrarily, the budget cant increase by more than 2 percent, while we have a district where the population is increasing dramatically….[that] adds upwards pressure. It’s a very difficult question to answer. The truth of the matter is, I would like to think about it more. I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision.

WC: The board recognizes the need to restrain taxes. We recognize that. The great tax cap is the public vote. If the tax cap happens, it’s going to be devastating. It’s going to be tougher on us.

MG: I do agree that the tax cap is needed. Unfunded mandates are some of the reasons spending has skyrocketed. If you build it, they will come. If you have the money, you will spend it. The only way to force that issue at the state level, is to sort of back into it. I don’t think it’s enough to say that the voters will vote down a budget.

What are your thoughts on the 2011-2012 school budget and would you change anything in it if you could?

TH: I like the budget. I was one of the people who approved it. We’re going to have to make hard decisions next year. I was happy with the budget overall. It was sort of a million cuts here and there.

LK: I think that it was done with a lot of planning and a lot of thought. I think it’s excellent. There isn’t anything in my opinion that I would change.

WC: We had very serious debates, and there was a lot of give and take. We were talking $6,000 and $3,000 items to cut. Let me hearken back to the letter from PTA, to eliminate the director of elementary school education. We want all students to be learning the same thing, and have the same skills when they get to sixth grade. We needed somebody in charge of that process. We think having Dr. Limato in that position is just the right thing to do and will move the district forward dramatically. 

MG: I just want to clarify one thing, the PTA council didn’t suggest exactly who should be eliminated. It was more of an open letter, just saying the entire structure needs to be looked at. I don’t believe in any way shape or form that the PTA said that Dr. Limato should be moved. There’s a lot of supervision. I don’t feel that this is a whole new curriculum—the Pythagorean Theorem and the Periodic Table haven’t changed. What we’re going to see are more assessments. I don’t feel that what is necessary is a lot of supervision to usher in a whole new curriculum. I don’t think the PTA council was that clear in saying that one position should be cut.

The election for two Board of Education seats will be held on May 17 from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the PMHS gym.