Election Profile: Weiping Wang For Holmdel Board Of Education

HOLMDEL, NJ —Three seats are open for the Holmdel Township Board of Education and six candidates are in the run.

Terence M. Wall, Surekha Collur, Kimberly Tuccillo, Weiping Wang, Jill Perez and Kristy O'Connor are all vying for a seat.

Wang, 53, is a technical leader for Cisco Systems and has spent over 20 years designing and delivering innovative software and hardware solutions to service providers for network planning and management.

The candidate is a father of three and holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and a graduate degree in computer engineering.

Are you running for local office in 2021? Contact Catarina Moura at catarina.moura@patch.com for information on being featured in a candidate profile and submitting campaign announcements to Patch.

READ MORE: Holmdel 2021 Election: Who's Running, All The Ways To Vote

Why are you seeking a seat on the school board?

I decided to run for Holmdel BOE because I have attended most of the BOE meetings in the past several years and sadly, I have been seeing BOE’s deterioration in transparency and communication to parents, its increasingly strained relationship with school administrators and teachers, and of course, our schools’ worsening education quality and our students’ declining academic performance. I am running for BOE because I want to make our schools better.

What is the single most important issue the Holmdel School District is facing and what
do you intend to do about it?

The single most important issue the Holmdel School District is facing is transparency and communication. I have recently published three articles on Patch for this.

My first article discussed the repeated shuffling of school principals and assistant principals and subsequent resignations of those who have been shuffled. Our BOE meetings never tried to provide parents any explanation of why.

My second article brought public attention to the Federal government-sponsored free lunch. Our neighboring towns’ schools have been providing it to their students, yet Holmdel has not. Our BOE never informed parents the availability of this option, let alone publicly discussing whether we should adopt it. There may be pros and cons of this program, but our parents have the right to know about it. This right was taken away by our BOE.

My third article shared my view on how the hiring of the permanent superintendent should proceed in principle in order to improve transparency and communication. I strongly believe that this process will have a significant impact on the direction of our schools.

Moving forward, one way for BOE to provide better transparency is to make the BOE meeting agenda informative such as listing committee reports to be discussed. Moreover, many important discussions occur within BOE subcommittees, but the public knows very little of these discussions. I suggest BOE make the subcommittee meeting public again and provide links to the subcommittee meeting minutes on the agenda.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking to serve on the school board seat?

The inclusiveness is what I really want to bring to the Board through election. I grew up in a family of educators and I myself have raised three children in Holmdel. In addition, since the millennium, I have observed a highly dynamic development of business and economy, science and technology in US. To keep the high-performing goal being achievable, the Board of Ed of a school district must provide an inclusive working environment for parents, teachers and administrators.

Every party should be able to share thoughts and feedback promptly on critical changes of policies and personnel in the district. That kind of inclusiveness will ensure that our children’s growth would fully benefit from the resourcefulness of our community.

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

I have spent more than 20 years designing and delivering innovative technology solution for
information network service providers. In my last employer, we had to help one of the tier 1 telecom service providers in US to design, plan and migrate their network to handle the exponential growth of their network. It took 12 months for me to work side by side with the customer, the account team and the development team to locate and evaluate all the risk factors beforehand. The solution was implemented successfully with no complaint from the customer.

Every successful delivery of a network solution requires the designer to take care of details to a
great extent. Similarly, every successful implementation of a school policy needs the Board of Ed to take care of details to a great extent as well. Beforehand, the board needs to gather information of negative impact or risk from as many resources as possible. Then the board shall develop sufficient communication with those who will be impacted substantially by the policy and manage the expectation properly in advance. Finally, once the policy becomes effective, the board should put a procedure in place to collect feedback in order to make posterior adjustments promptly. The successful implementation of school policies cannot be guaranteed in case the board does not follow those steps.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?
All my three children love swimming and are competitive swimming athletes. My eldest daughter Karen holds the record of 400 IM and 800 Free Relay for Wellesley College and Annie holds the record of 400 Free Relay for Holmdel High School. In order for every kid to have enough practice, as well as sleeping and study time, my wife and I have been busy swimming parents for nearly twenty years, devoting a material amount of time on a daily basis to the children.

That single aspect of the development of our kids, however, has already consumed a great chunk of parents’ time, energy and attention. Therefore, it will take a whole village to raise a child. For the best interests of our children, the Board of Ed, parents, teachers and administrators need to work together closely throughout times.