Meet The Madison Board Of Education Candidates

MADISON, NJ — Four candidates are running for two open seats on the Madison Board of Education. If elected, they'll serve the school district for three years. Patch caught up with them before the November election to ask a few questions.

Sarah Fischer, Curtis Gilfillan, Thomas Piskula, and David Steketee are the four candidates listed on the ballot. We asked them all the same four questions:

• Why are you running for Board Of Education?
• What is the biggest challenge facing schools in your town, and how will you address it?
• What three words would you use to describe yourself to someone who has never met you?
• What experience in your background has prepared you to be an effective leader?

All candidates were sent the questions at the same time, and were given the same deadline to submit them. They were given no minimum or maximum word count, and encouraged to write as much as they needed, or to keep the answers brief if they wanted to. Answers were submitted by email and are presented here as submitted. Candidates are listed in alphabetical order by last name.

Sarah Fischer

Why are you running for Board Of Education?

I am running for the BOE because as an educator for over 15 years I have an important perspective to offer. Throughout my career, I have worked with all ages, from pre-school to adult education, and have spent the last 7 years teaching in the Humanities department at Newark Academy in Livingston. I am also the Director of Community Service at Newark Academy, and I have held leadership roles in educationally focused nonprofits before moving to New Jersey. Because of this experience, I feel that I have holistic approach to education that will complement the current board members’ strengths and the work of Superintendent Schwarz.

My family and I moved to Madison eight years ago and immediately knew we were part of a unique community. My husband and I have two children in the district, one entering 5th grade and one entering kindergarten, so I have a vested interest in the success of our district. I want to give back to my community and believe I have a unique skill set to do so. In that respect, one of the changes in the district that I have been fighting for and will continue to advocate for if I am elected is the integration of our school gardens into the core curriculum. There is a lot of research that highlights the benefits of school gardens to teach STEM, literacy, a love of nature, and environmental stewardship. Over the past three years, I have been privileged to serve on the Green Team at KRS, managing the garden and the beautification of the school grounds. I wrote the garden curriculum, oversaw its implementation, and trained parent volunteers. While the garden has been successful, as an educator I have seen great programs fade away because the parents involved leave the school or because the program is not tied to the other classroom learning in a meaningful way. I want to work to ensure this program is integrated into the core content so our students can reap these benefits especially since all three elementary schools will have school gardens beginning this year. Finally, I strongly believe that having our youth engage in service is a key component of how we raise empathetic adults. Leading by example is a great place to start and serving on the board would be an honor.

What is the biggest challenge facing schools in your town, and how will you address it?

Over the past year as a district we have made great strides in filling the administrative positions that were vacant, for which I commend the board and Superintendent Schwarz; however, the district continues to struggle with budget constraints making it hard for the district to expand programs and update facilities. While this has recently improved to some degree under Gov. Murphy’s administration, it is still an area of concern. Having work in non-profit management in New Orleans after Katrina as a program coordinator for Literacy AmeriCorps working with adult education, ESL, and family literacy, I understand how to run educational programming with a constrained budget and believe this experience can help the board make the difficult funding decisions necessary for our district to continue to be successful. I have been involved in multiple strategic planning processes and hope this visionary and organizational work will benefit the district as we seek to make the best choices for our students who should be at the heart of every decision.

Related to this issue is the fact that a large portion of our budget is directed towards special services. This is not an issue but rather a strength of our district and it gives us a chance to closely examine what true inclusion on a variety of levels should look like. In my role as an educator and non-profit manager, I have had direct experience with many of these special services and what it takes work with these students and families to serve their needs. I utilized special services when I was in elementary school, and I am a mother of a child with an IEP. I believe the district is on the right track trying to keep students in district and serve their needs as well as focusing on differentiated learning. I especially like the idea of the genius hour in elementary school that Mr. Ross has discussed at past board meetings. My son loves the new Reach 2018 program, and I want to work to ensure all students get access to this type of experiential, problem-solving based learning.

What three words would you use to describe yourself to someone who has never met you?

Dedicated, Compassionate, and Innovative

What experience in your background has prepared you to be an effective leader?

For the last 15 years I have been in positions of leadership including serving as Assistant Director of National Programs for a youth-based agency in Vermont that ran statewide programming and as Program Coordinator for Literacy AmeriCorps which oversaw members in programs across the region. Over the last 6 years, I have been charged with the task of rebuilding the community service program at Newark Academy. This required me to redesign the program, change the culture of the school towards service, develop and train student leaders, and oversee many of my colleagues. I have also been tasked with a leadership role in writing of the International Baccalaureate curriculum and mentoring multiple teachers as they deliver this content. Throughout these experiences, I have learned that effective leadership requires a thoughtful strategic plan and vision that considers as many variables as possible and the flexibility to change course as needed. A good leader needs the creativity to find new solutions and must listen to those around them at all levels and demonstrate empathy for the various constituencies they seek to serve. I feel confident that I am this type of leader and look forward to serving on the Madison Board of Education.

Curt B. Gilfillan

Why are you running for Board Of Education?

I am running for the BOE because of my desire to be involved in my community (with 2 boys in the Madison Public School system) and to effectuate pragmatic changes in the system designed to educate our children to be able to overcome real world obstacles and real world challenges as opposed to simply making everyone feel good about themselves. While an admirable goal, it should be secondary to truly educating our kids to succeed.

What is the biggest challenge facing schools in your town, and how will you address it?

The biggest challenge facing Madison schools is the failure to provide the necessary programs and support to those with special needs and to support, with meaningful enrichment programs and coordinated Honors and AP programs, the gifted and talented students in our system. We need to ensure that we have a strong administration, supported by the BOE, who are dedicated and focused on fixing the core issues here, and not simply putting up window dressing to make things appear better.

What three words would you use to describe yourself to someone who has never met you?

Pragmatic, goal oriented and persistent.

What experience in your background has prepared you to be an effective leader?

I have been a trial attorney and advocate for over twenty years. Mediating widely divergent positions, debating positions and points of law and persuading juries of factual positions throughout my career has provided me the tools and experience to be able to build bridges between two opposing viewpoints and reach pragmatic, workable results.

Tom Piskula

Why are you running for Board Of Education?

We need to celebrate our mathletes as much as we celebrate our athletes. In that way we aim higher.

I have run for the BOE, served on the BOE and am now running for the BOE again with the same goal: to increase the attention and emphasis given to academic achievement. We have a wonderful way of life in Madison that offers a sense of community and the positive things that go with it. Yet by some measures students in nearby communities have, on average, higher academic achievement.

Money is always a factor. Of the quantitative variables that are readily measurable, household income is generally believed to be a particularly notable predictor of the academic achievement of the children in the household. But what researchers really want to measure, but cannot directly, is the education-mindedness of the household. So they grasp for possibly-associated variables, including the education levels of the parents, direct questionnaires, and even, historically, the number of books in the home.

Anyone’s education-mindedness can be increased. The ability to increase it does not depend on household income or a person’s previous history. It depends on access to information about education and on the rewards, often psychological rewards, from acquiring the information. I am running for the BOE to continue to work toward increasing the education-mindedness of, and thus the student achievement in, Madison.

We need to celebrate our mathletes as much as we celebrate our athletes. In that way we aim higher.

What is the biggest challenge facing schools in your town, and how will you address it?

Our biggest challenge is to add a higher degree of education-mindedness to the wonderful culture of Madison. I believe we should use the two-fold approach that any sports coach would use:

1) Make the best use of the people that you have.

We must increase the information flow from the district leadership. We have had a change of district leadership and some progress has been made. Attachments, including policies, and informational documents, are now being made available to the public along with the BOE meeting agenda. The new superintendent has hosted “coffees,” written newsletters to parents, and delivered his State of the Schools address. A very easy and significant next step would be to broadcast the BOE meetings in the same way that Borough Council and other district BOE meetings are broadcast.

2) Recruit the best people you can.

Ratings and rankings matter. They can potentially move education-minded people to Madison. Those people may be buyers or renters. That process can further bolster community support of student achievement – aiming higher -- that I believe would serve Madison well over the long run. We will never teach to the test. But we need to understand the ratings well enough to show Madison in its best light. Attention areas would include data correctness, interpretation context, and understanding the value, or lack of value, of the methodology.

What three words would you use to describe yourself to someone who has never met you?

Dedicated. Diligent. Kind.

What experience in your background has prepared you to be an effective leader?

My teaching in the Economics and Finance Department of Baruch College is primarily at the Master’s level, and so I lead several large groups of adults, many already parents, through difficult quantitative courses every year.

In the area of civic service, I continue to serve on the Borough’s Open Space, Recreation, and Historic Preservation Advisory Committee. Through that work I am able to contribute to our community experience.

A significant aspect of BOE service is developing constructive working relationships with other members. I have been able to build board relationships that I am very pleased to have, particularly in pursuit of an increase in the emphasis on student achievement. Please allow me to thank all of the board members for their support for full-day kindergarten starting in fall 2019, although there are still challenges in the details. Also please allow me to express my appreciation to taxpayers, parents, civic leaders, school volunteers and all who support Madison public schools!

David Steketee

Why are you running for BOE?

I have one child entering third grade, and one child in preschool. It is important to me that we have a school system that supports their growth and development as well as the growth and development of every child in our community now and in the decades to come.

What is the biggest challenge facing schools in your town, and how will you address it?

I believe one of the biggest challenges facing Madison schools is the disparity of educational outcomes between different economic groups. While it is beneficial for families to have the resources to provide outside support to help their children, this outside intervention may be masking deficiencies in our educational system. And, since not all families in our district have access to these resources, we may not be delivering the desired educational outcomes to all students. I want to work with the district administration to help better utilize the information the district has about its students to identify under-performing students both early in their educational careers as well as identify dips in performance throughout their time in the district. This way we can avoid creating educational deficits that begin in grade school, and help students if they struggle at any point in their educational journey.

What three words would you use to describe yourself to someone who has never met you?

Thoughtful, creative, driven.

What experience in your background has prepared you to be an effective leader?

Throughout my nearly 20 year career in information technology and professional services, I have developed a broad set of skills ranging from leading multi-year projects with multiple stakeholders, to developing business plans and financial projections for IT investments, from building websites to working with artificial intelligence.

All candidate images submitted by the candidates and used with permission. Main image via Shutterstock.