Rydal-Meadowbrook Civic Association

Candidate for Abington Board of School Directors

Download & print PDF with an overview of all candidates, individual responses and questions to be asked at the Forum on October 27, 2011. RMCA and our co-hosts are pleased to provide this candidate an opportunity to present qualifications and priorities. These are the opinions of the candidate and RMCA does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy of the content or typographic errors:

  In your view, what function does the Board of School Directors provide in the School District?
The School Board Directors in essence represent the citizens of the township and are responsible to successfully create, direct & pay for the local school district, and give an accounting of all these activities to the citizens who elected them.

What role do you envision for yourself on the Board of School Directors? What experience do you bring to the position and what do you want to accomplish?
I’d like to be an influence in the choosing of curriculum for the schools.  Although all 4 of my children were students in the Abington Schools at some point, I home-schooled the last two through 12th grade.  Having done so, I often visited the curriculum room in the administration building to decide which books, if any, I would like to use in teaching my children at home.  I also attended several home school curriculum fairs, and reviewed and tried a lot of different options through our years of home education. 

I would also like to observe and analyze the schools’ present approach in dealing with their troubled students. I would like to evaluate the effectiveness and expense of such programs.  I would also like to encourage innovative “parents only” programs to help parents with their children.  I would like to draw on volunteer resources in the community’s retirees.  I would like to draw on overlooked ancient wisdom for today’s modern problems.

The School District has a budget of $130 million. What are your funding priorities over the next four years?
I am not a politician nor am I a professional educator, and I don’t I desire to be either.  I don’t have any funding priorities.  I have accomplishment priorities.  I’d like to see Abington Schools leading the country in achieving the kind of Reading, Math and Science levels that we accomplished in the middle of the last century, when we led the world in education.  I do not look to how to spend, but how to challenge the spending of the tax payers money.  I have not been impressed with any careful restraint on the school budget over the years I’ve lived in the township.  I do not want to deprive any student of what would enhance their school experience, but I am offended at any money being thrown into expensive and unproductive methodology.  I have a lot to learn – and I mean to learn it.

RMCA is co-hosting the Forum with the Abington Cheltenham Jenkintown League of Women Voters and Abington Parent Council (PTA & PTOs).

References and Links  
Strategic Plan Mid-point Review 
2011 Budget Summary
Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators White Paper 
Teachers' Agreement 
Memo on Rights and Responsibility of Students 
Board Communications