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BOE candidates face off on issues
(by Kevin Glynn - April 09, 2008)
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Joan D’Elia*
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Alfred J. Murphy, Jr.
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Age: Not provided
Borough resident: 12 years
Family: Husband Richard; son Evan is a student at the
George
G.
White
Middle School .
Occupation: Realtor
Education: Business degree from
Quinnipiac
University
Elected office: two years as board member
Community involvement: Member of the NJ Association of Realtors, National Association of Realtors, and Bergen Board of Realtors, Bergen MLS, Cub Scout den leader, various committee work through schools, chaired children’s game day, end of year faculty luncheon at Meadowbrook, co-president George White FFA for the past two years, board member of temple.
Why are you running for the board?
“Education is important to me and to always strive to give our children the best that it has to offer them. I would like to always see that our district is moving forward and being at the forefront of new technology, class offerings, extra-curricular activities, as well as competitive sports programs for our children.“
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Age: Not provided
Borough resident: 50 years
Family: Wife, Marge, passed away in October after more than 51 years of marriage; son, Matt, youngest of five children, graduated
Pascack
Valley
High School ; granddaughter attending
Ann
Blanche
Smith
School .
Occupation: Retired director of operations for Verizon; recently retired from auto parts replacement business
Education: B.S. in economics and M.B.A. in management from
Seton
Hall
University ; Dale Carnegie instructor course;
Rutgers municipal finance course; certified Emergency Medical Technician
Elected office: Formerly mayor for eight years, one year as president of Pascack Valley Mayors Association; implementer and member of PVMA Joint Insurance Fund; councilman for nine years; Hillsdale Board of Education for 10 years; Pascack Valley Regional Board of Education for six years, one year as president; Democratic municipal chairman
Community involvement: St. John the Baptist Parish lector, usher, Tuesday Morning Men's Prayer Group, parish maintenance committee, parish construction projects committees; Hillsdale House board of directors; borough planning board; county planning board transportation committee; Hillsdale Volunteer Ambulance Corps; American Legion General Wood Post 162 member and publicity chairman, Vice-chair of Local Draft Board 47, district Boy Scout committee, chair of Hillsdale Memorial Day parade committee.
Why are you running for the board?
“As a citizen I have a responsibility to participate in our government. Too many people fought, sacrificed and died for the freedom that we enjoy. Plato put it very well when he said, ‘One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.’ Look at the crowd in Trenton and
Washington and you see what he meant. I don't like that and feel you have to do something; that’s why I stay so involved.”
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Hillsdale has the only contested seat this year for the Pascack Valley Regional High School Board of Education, with Alfred J. Murphy, Jr. challenging incumbent Joan D’Elia, who filled an unexpired seat two years ago.
Each candidate was asked to discuss the most important issues currently facing the district and how they propose to address them.
Murphy named several areas of concern, including balancing the educational needs of the students with the financial needs of the taxpayers.
“We cannot afford to be the most costly 9-12 grade school in
New Jersey and perhaps the country,” said Murphy. “Our per pupil cost is $18,892 and the state says the adequacy base is $11,118. The board doesn’t talk about that.”
Murphy said the problem must be addressed through improved communication with the sending towns, something he said the current board does not do. “They [the board members] have no goal to work on that… They reach out to parents but tend to ignore the majority in the four towns. Their mailings are not very informative or timely and they have stonewalled the televising of their public meetings even though I have presented them with petitions signed by hundreds of citizens asking that the meetings be televised.”
Murphy believes that the students who are in the video production classes could use existing technology to televise the meetings and said the Freeholders in
Hackensack use the Academy High students to televise their meetings.
Murphy also thinks that improvement and discussion about curriculum could help to lower costs. He named elective classes that have very small enrollments, sometimes fewer than 10 students, as an area that the board needs to address. “There is no board discussion about these small classes and that must start to happen so the public can gain better insights into how far below the purported 21.6 average class size the schools really are,” he said.
Additionally, Murphy questioned the expense and effectiveness of the district’s laptop program. “Can we afford to purchase printers for each student to use with the school provided computers?” he asked. “I don't think so; and educationally this need has not been proven. … The school recently switched from PC based computers to Apples and they do not have an evaluation tool in place. The private sector would never do that without the tools in place because such programs are very expensive.”
Conversely, D’Elia did not name areas of concern, but rather stressed the need to continue to make improvements that have been made in recent years. “There are no educational issues to be resolved in the PVRHS district at this time,” she said. “The referendum work is winding down and the buildings look fantastic. The BOE has been responsible enough to allocate monies each year for capital improvements and maintenance on the work, which has been done to date.”
D’Elia said that a concern throughout the community has been making improvements to and taking care of the school buildings through maintenance so that the district doesn’t need another referendum in the immediate future. “We have instituted many major curriculum initiatives as well as continuing extra-curricular clubs and improving the athletic programs with distinguished coaches,” she said.
“In short,” said D’Elia, “we must always be on the forefront of education and resist the temptation to rest and be comfortable with the status quo, or, worse yet, ignore the lessons learned today, and fall back on the past ways of board of education policies.”
Board of Education elections will be held on Tuesday, April 15. The polls are open from 2 to 9 p.m.
Kevin Glynn's e-mail address is glynn@northjersey.com.
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