Election 2025: Hedy Ranieri For Council Rock School Board

Candidates running in the Nov. 4 general election are providing background about themselves and their positions on the issues to voters in these profiles, which will run in Patch individually for each candidate.

UPPER MAKEFIELD, PA — Two candidates are running for one open seat on the Council Rock School Board in Region 8. The seat is currently held by Yota Palli, the board's former president, who is not seeking re-election.

Voters will be asked to pick between Democrat Cheryl Rickert and Republican Hedy Ranieri for a four-year seat on the eight-member board.

Region 8 includes Upper Makefield voting districts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Biological Information

Name: Hedy L Ranieri
Age: 66
Town of Residence: Upper Makefield/Washington Crossing
Party Affiliation: Republican
Family: Married. My husband and I have four children and one grandson
Education: Bachelor of Science in Environmental Health from East Carolina University,
Greenville, NC
Occupation: Retired. I retired after a 40-year career in the insurance industry. I ended my career as Sr. VP and Chief Claims Officer, overseeing matters for two operating units within the WRBerkley Corporation. In my position, I was responsible for litigation/legal management and oversight, budget creation and approval, internal and external audits, regulatory review and compliance, vendor management and billing, legal management and oversight, mentorship programs, personnel and their development, and execution of 1-, 2- and 5-year plans. Additionally, I held a senior-level volunteer position within a national association of insurance professionals and attorneys, for which I developed educational curriculum and coursework for professional certification, lectures, and creation and administration of testing.

Questions

Why are you running for school board? If elected what will your priorities be?

After a 40 year career, I now have the time to bring my skill sets to improve our community. I care about our community and I care about the education that the students within Council Rock should be getting. I am concerned about the upward trajectory of taxes within our community. Our schools are the largest drivers of our tax dollars and yet from objective standards we are not getting the “return on investment” our taxes are paying for.

My priorities will be to seek to help the Board focus on the core mission of educating the students, giving them a solid educational foundation to succeed in life in whatever path they choose.

What do you see as the major issues facing the district and how would you address them?

Spending has increased exponentially and yet the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) student proficiency rates have remained relatively flat or falling. The school board has a fiduciary duty and a moral obligation to spend taxpayer dollars in a way that results in both improved learning and objective proof of that learning by increased proficiency and college readiness scores. This does not mean “teaching to the test”, but rather improving the overall education, critical thinking and core curriculum.

School Board positions are a great example of the consequences of an election. Our schools are our largest tax liability and burden. Although Council Rock School District schools have a good reputation, they are not what they use to be. While our scores are flat or going down, at thesame time our taxes have gone up considerably. Council Rock School Board has increased taxes every year for the past three years. The most recent increase for 2025-26 is planned to be 2.93 percent. The current budget for 2025-2026 is $292 million, and this is with a $6.9 million deficit. If you divide the current number of students into this budget, it equates to just under $28,000 cost per student. To put that number in perspective, 2025 tuition at The College of New Jersey, a reputable state school, is $19,632 for in-state students and $25,727 for out-of-state students.

I spent my career in Insurance, and from the early 1980s onward, the mantra was “do more with less," work smarter, and always within budgets. Fiscal responsibility and accountability were necessary and mandated. Why is it that our Democrat-controlled School Board never “got the memo?” There is no transparency, and an apparent disregard for the fiscal and fiduciary duty of the board to spend money wisely. Additionally, in a May school board meeting it was revealed that the board, in a closed-door financial session, had been discussing adopting Policy 605.1. School Boards are taxing authorities. Policy 605.1 is based upon the PA Supreme Court Ruling: Valley Forge Towers Apartments N, LP v. Upper Merion School District, 163 A.3d 962, 979 n.19 (Pa. 2017). If adopted, it gives the school board the authority to initiate tax appeals against individual homeowners (whether from a recent sale or not), where it is believed that a property is “under-assessed” for tax purposes.

We can have great schools without the continued and unrelenting increase in taxes. We can have great schools without implementing draconian tax plans such as policy 605.1. We need to take a deep dive into the curriculum, schedules, and courses to determine why scores are flat or trending downward and we need to audit the overall spending within Council Rock. We need to have a “return on investment” corresponding to the overall spending and we need to keep the students and the parents at the forefront of all decisions made and plans implemented.

If elected, what would you fight to change, improve, or keep the same?

I will fight to improve the overall objective performance of the students within Council Rock. I will fight to hold the line on taxes. Tax payers deserve clear answers, transparency and a Board that takes its fiduciary duties toward our community seriously. Our communities deserve responsible budgeting, and decision making. The tax and spend mentality of the current board’s majority must end. I will fight to remove politics from the Board. The Board needs to be non-partisan, and transparent without its own political agenda or motives. We need to remove politics from our Board, because when the majority votes in lock-step with each other, and does not allow discourse or discussion, then it has effectively shut out the minority members’ ability to represent their communities. This is unacceptable.