You're the Boss

This is the time of year when school boards across New Jersey are busy completing their annual reviews of their superintendents and board secretaries. Boards are also required to review themselves - both as a body, and as individuals. Incredibly, nowhere on this self-review survey is a question pertaining to how well the board, or the individual board member, is doing representing the people who elected them.

Instead of working with parents and taxpayers to build the school system they want, there are board members who have contempt for the public. They know what's best for their respective towns, and the public doesn't have a clue. There is even the suggestion that school board members have to do what they think is right for kids, because parents fail their kids! Students will succeed not because of their parents, but in spite of them!

This is wrong.

I have always believed that parents and taxpayers are my bosses. Parents need to be in charge of their children, not me. Every decision I have made on the Board has been rooted in that concept - from my opposition to Random Drug Testing to my insistence that Middle School faculty keep their hands out of kids' lunch boxes.

As for the rest of our tax-paying public, I believe the customer is always right. You're paying for this enterprise, it needs to be the way you want it to be. I am proud to have been able to keep taxes well below the rate of inflation during this economic crisis, because this is what the public has demanded. That test scores and overall academic achievement have continued to rise is a testament to the hard work of YOUR children.

I applaud them, and you.