Patch Candidate Profile: Seth Klaskin, Madison Board of Edcuation

MADISON, CT — As the 2023 municipal elections get closer in Madison, there are plenty of races with candidates eager to serve in elected office.

Madison Patch asked candidates to answer questions about their campaigns and will publish candidate profiles as Election Day draws near.

Seth Klaskin, 55, is running for a seat on the Board of Education in Madison as a democrat candidate.

Klaskin holds a BA from the University of Pittsburgh and a Juris Doctorate (JD) from Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center. Since 2019, he’s been self-employed as managing director of Enterprise Software Sales Outsourcing (Specialty Outsourced Sales, LLC., a Madison-based company). From 1996 to 2008, Klaskin was a civil trial lawyer (Klaskin Law Office); from 2008 to 2016, he was state manager business services director at the Office of the Secretary of the State of Connecticut, and from 2016 to 2019, he worked in Enterprise Sales for a CT-Based Software Company.

Klsakin’s family includes his wife, Robyn, a lawyer and the executive director of The Madison Arts Barn, and three daughters raised in Madison who attended and graduated from Madison Public Schools.

Have you ever held a public office, whether appointive or elective?

2004 - 2007 Elected Alternate to Madison Zoning Board of Appeals; 2007 - 2019 Madison Board of Education (elected to three 4-year terms and served for 12 years in various leadership roles). Reappointed by MDTC to Board of Education in November 2021 (to fill Katie Stein's seat when she was elected to BOF); Elected by BOE to serve as BOE Chair from November 2021 through the present. I also serve on the CT General Assembly's DATA Board (Data Analysis Technology Advisory Board), appointed by The Speaker of the House (and by his predecessor in office before that), and I have served on the Drafting Committee of the 2017 draft of the Connecticut Limited Liability Company Act as a member of the Business Law Section of the Connecticut Bar Association, as well as on the Legal Advisory Committee to the Connecticut legislative committee that adopted amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code, Revised Article 9 in 2011. I continue to serve as an appointee to the Madison Strategic Plan Advisory Committee and as BOE Liaison to the New School Building Committee.

Why are you seeking this office?

My wife and I moved to town 26 years ago largely to start and raise our family in a great town with excellent schools and beautiful beaches. It is hard to believe that our three children are now out of school. It has been a high honor and privilege to give back to this amazing community by contributing my time and skills to serve the students and staff of Madison Public schools. I want to continue my service to see the completion of the Schools Renewal Plan that I worked hard over the past decade to help bring to fruition. I also want to ensure the safety and the mental health and well-being of our students as they begin to transition through the mental health crisis that has scarred their learning years. Madison Public Schools is hitting its stride, and we are positioned to experience a bit of a Golden Age. I would like to support the next-level board work that will lay the foundation for the coming achievements. We are poised to make education joyful again, while we bring authentic learning to "Every Student...Every Day." We have an excellent Board, very talented Administrators, and an amazing group of educators and support staff, all aligned to this vision. I want to ensure it happens.

Please complete this statement: The single most pressing issue facing my constituents is ___, and this is what I intend to do about it.

The single most pressing issue facing my constituents remains the student mental health crisis pervading the entire country. I intend to continue our board's leadership in addressing this crisis. To date, Madison Public Schools has been way out ahead of the curve in addressing this and in bringing the joy of learning back into the classroom, post-COVID. The board has prioritized and supported unprecedented advancements to address the crisis, through the addition of counselors and other professional staff, and through the rapid deployment of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) embedded in our curriculum and programs throughout the district. Almost every curriculum has been rewritten to add SEL components, each building's School Development Plan has implemented SEL, and the District Development Plan is being written now to incorporate SEL. Our students are responding very well and there are indications that this has bolstered academics by accentuating the positive aspects of social behavior (post-COVID), improved sportsmanship, and fomented a feeling of security among our students. Kids in our care are not afraid to attend school anymore. Students are generally happy and well-socialized. The transformation has been truly remarkable, and I intend to continue to support SEL across our curricula.

What are the major differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

The BOE race this year is fortunately not political. There are seats for each candidate, and this makes me happy. I am so proud and humbled to be working with Cathy Miller, Diane Infantine-Vyce, and Galen Cawley. We have accomplished so much together and there is more work to be done.

What other issues do you intend to address during your campaign?

It is important that the Schools Renewal Plan be completed and that we transition to the new District alignment for the Fall of 2025. Furthermore, I take pride in the fact that the Board of Education has delivered very moderate budgets, helping to hold the line on taxes, while still supporting enviable academic achievement. Over the past six years, the BOE budget has had a tax impact of less than 2% on average. I intend to keep working with the Administration, with the Board of Selectmen, and with the Board of Finance to continue this moderate budgeting trend while finding creative ways to promote and meet the highest standards for our graduates. It is part of The Madison Way, and I have been fortunate to have supported this for many years.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

Every year I have served on the board, student achievement has been strong. As Chair, I have helped set priorities that have benefitted our students. I have worked well with my fellow board members, and I have fostered a nonpartisan and collegial board mentality that has allowed the board to accomplish excellent results. I work well with the Superintendent and the talented administrators in our District. I openly show appreciation for all the hard work, devotion, and accomplishments of our staff and I support reasonable contracts calculated to both attract and retain top talent, while meeting the expectations of taxpayers who bear the brunt of funding our education system. I also serve as the board's representative on several other town committees, such as the New School Building Committee and the Strategic Plan Advisory Committee, for example. From a logistical perspective, I am self-employed and have found ample time to devote to board work. I have a very high attendance rate at all of the board's various meetings (I serve as an ex officio member to all board committees).

What is the best advice anyone ever gave you?

"Don't take any wooden nickels." It sounds silly to respond to this question with such a fundamental bit of advice, but it speaks to a very important life skill that we try to impart on our students. The phrase on its face advises to be careful about taking money that is not legal tender. But what the phrase really advises, on a deeper level, is to be critical and not just take things as they are presented. As a History major in college, and then as a practicing attorney, I always found great value in using critical thinking and reasoning skills. To relate this to education and my role as a board member, it is important to be critical in a dynamic field where every couple years a new flavor of curriculum is trotted out by "experts," and the education supply industry makes lots of money selling new, canned curricula, every year. The Madison Way is to write our own curricula using an intensive, professional methodology carefully developed by our Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Gail Dahling-Hench. Not only is the curriculum written by our teachers, for our teachers, but it is informed by and mapped to our District's Profiles of a Graduate, and it receives student input where appropriate. It has buy-in from teachers and students as a result. We make adjustments and keep curricula on cycles, to ensure they do not get stale and that they incorporate the latest scientifically-proven tools and pedagogy. And when the state mandated last year that all schools must adopt one of five approved canned commercial curricula for K-3 reading, we opted to apply for a statutory waiver. Gail drafted a 600-page document that was supported by a UCONN professor and a national curriculum expert as our waiver submission. That document and our K-3 reading curriculum are the envy of many top school districts around the state. We did not settle for a wooden nickel. Instead, we fought for our right to continue to use our carefully crafted curriculum. One-size-fits-all is not good enough for the students in our care. It is a wooden nickel. Let other districts settle for the commercial curricula; we will continue to push to educate our students The Madison Way. And besides, the best way to support our students as we teach them to think critically, is to lead by example!