Nine vie for three seats on Edison school board

William F. Brunner Edison residents will have plenty of options when they step into the voting booths for the annual school election.

Nine candidates are seeking three available seats on the Board of Education. Each term runs for three years.

The field includes two incumbents, Gene I. Maeroff, who is currently serving as board president, and William H. Van Pelt, and six newcomers — William F. Brunner, Arthur Esposito, Anu Garrison, Frank Heelan, Anthony F. Massaro, Sapana Shah and Lois Yukna.

Current board member Aimee Szilagyi is not seeking another term.

Two groups of candidates have formed teams and campaigned together: Maeroff, Heelan and Shah as one slate; Massaro, Garrison and Yukna as another.

Polls will be open from noon to 9 p.m. on April 27. Residents will also vote on the $205 million 2011-12 school budget, which would increase taxes by $80 on a home assessed at the township average of $176,700.

Anu Garrison William F. Brunner

Brunner, 76, has been a community activist in the township for 10 years, attending Board of Education and township meetings. He and his wife, Hope, have three children. He served as a U.S. Army paratrooper for four years and spent 35 years in the foundry industry.

He said that having a 16-year-old granddaughter living with him has kept him closely involved with the educational system.

Brunner, who currently serves on the longterm facilities committee that is chaired by Van Pelt, said he believes the biggest problem facing the school district is the challenge of continuing to provide a quality education, while also holding down costs in these trying financial times.

“The current proposed school budget has a zero next to the salary, increment, longevity line for each of the union members’ jobs, whose contract is up for renewal this year,” he said. “I would encourage the union to sign a new contract with a zero increase for the first year. I would also ask the board to then back out the monies that it has built in to the budget to accommodate the teachers’ increase the first year, thus saving the taxpayers some of the proposed increase.”

Frank Heelan Brunner said he is running as an independent. He described himself as a fiscal conservative with a deep-rooted interest in the community.

Arthur Esposito

Esposito, 54, and his wife, Diane, have three children. He is retired and has lived in the township for 45 years.

He said he feels the biggest issue for the school district is the lack of funding for effective teachers.

“Highly qualified teachers are essential to teaching our future,” he said. “Without proper funding to hire and keep these teachers, the students are the ones who will suffer. These students deserve nothing but the best.”

Gene Maeroff Esposito, noting that he has the students’ best interests at heart, said he would look over the school budget and find ways to keep and/or hire highly qualified teachers.

Anu Garrison

Garrison, 48, and her husband, Len, have three children. She currently is a mathematics teacher at South Plainfield High School and has lived in the township for 17 years.

“I am an educator, a parent and a taxpayer,” she said.

As an educator, she said, she is in the classroom every day working with students.

“I am aware of the issues that students and faculty face on a daily basis,” she said. “As a parent with children in the school district, I want the best for them. I want challenging curriculum, great leadership opportunities through sports and extracurricular activities, and positive role models in their teachers. As a taxpayer, I want to maintain my property values; this will only be done with the best school districts.”

Anthony F. Massaro Garrison said she feels one of the top issues that the school district faces is the financial burden placed on the taxpayers as a result of the cuts in state aid, on top of the “unfair” funding formula used by the state.

“There are two sides to the equation: increase revenue and decrease spending,” she said. “To increase revenue we should add a self-funding position such as a grant writer who is compensated based on the amount of money generated to the school district. We should follow models that are currently used in higher education. To decrease spending, we should look at positions where educators are not in the classroom and assess the layers of administrative support.”

Sapana Shah Frank Heelan

Heelan, 72, is retired as superintendent of schools for the Manville school district and the Tuxedo Park School District in New York. He and his wife, Ann, have four children, and he has lived in the township for 26 years.

The former educator said he has the time, health and energy to apply his unique perspective as a teacher, superintendent and parent to the continued improvement of education in Edison. He said he could apply his experience to areas as diverse as curriculum development, student testing, personnel, special education, school law, learning technologies, school finance, negotiations, staff development, evaluation systems, school facilities, planning, textbook analysis, school scheduling, transportation and school governance.

Lois Yukna Heelan said that offering quality education for students benefits not only the students but also the taxpayers of Edison.

“It is axiomatic that people purchase a home primarily on the basis of the quality of education in any given town or city,” he said. “Consequently, the optimal protection for property values of any community is to improve and transform the educational offerings for learning and perfect the delivery systems for students.”

He said student achievement is the driver of educational quality to ensure that students in the game of life get a good shot straight down the fairway. This will be done with the guidance of teachers, parents and the educational community. Also, he said spending discipline has to be applied to all aspects of the educational process so that taxpayer dollars are wisely spent on the preeminent goal of student achievement.

Gene Maeroff

Maeroff, 72, is seeking his second term. He has lived in Edison for 23 years and has a son and two daughters. He is a senior fellow at the Teachers College at Columbia University.

He said he believes the top issue for the largest district in the county is continuing the progress that it has made during the 2010- 11 school year in achieving stability.

“The 2009-10 school year ended in a tangled financial mess and a leadership vacuum,” he said. “As the new president for 2010-11, with the aid of the new majority on the school board, I laid the groundwork for greater stability and closer attention to educational achievement.”

Maeroff noted that he led the search for an interim superintendent last spring and then for a permanent superintendent, who took over this winter.

“I supported more openness and transparency with my regular president’s messages,” he said.

Maeroff said he welcomes “solid majority” on the school board, and that is why he is running for re-election on a slate with Shah and Heelan.

“They are free of conflicts and will be able to vote on all issues,” he said. “They are beholden to no special interest group. The school board desperately needs such members if it is to serve students, taxpayers and staff with an approach that banishes cronyism and predicates all hiring and promotion on what people know, not whom they know.”

Maeroff said this is a crucial election for the school district.

“The district is at a fragile point, and the board could easily slide backward if it gets new members who are not independent,” he said. “I bring a special perspective to the board after a career in education policy analysis.”

Maeroff is the author of 14 books, which encompass school boards, education in the primary grades, online learning, the education of the disadvantaged, the empowerment of teachers, and the parental role in the learning of their children.

Anthony F. Massaro

Massaro, 64, is a retired teacher, high school principal and assistant superintendent. He has lived in the township for 26 years and is married to Diana Joffe. He has a son and grandson. He also previously served on the Township Council for three terms.

“I am an independent thinker and have considerable experience resolving complex financial and personnel issues,” he said. “Over time, I have successfully handled most of the tasks of school employees. I have further learned to work in the public eye as a member of the Edison Township Council.”

He said he has no family members employed by the township or the Board of Education.

Massaro said school funding is a major issue for districts like Edison.

“This issue is compounded by the poor economy and vilification of public schools,” he said. “They make a handy political whipping boy for some political leaders.”

Massaro said he believes the level of funding and method of funding seems unlikely to be changed in the near future. He said he intends to use his life experiences to help the residents of Edison live within the means provided.

“My goal would be to provide the best possible education at a price we can afford,” he said.

Massaro said his other goal is to have every high school student in the district have an application filled out for some sort of higher education, whether it is for a twoyear or four-year college, vocational school, technical school, etc. This, he said, would not present an additional cost to the district or the taxpayer.

Sapana Shah

Shah, 34, has lived in the township for over 20 years. She graduated from the Edison school system in 1994. She is a trial attorney in Jersey City and, prior to attending law school, was a financial analyst for Dun & Bradstreet.

The newcomer said that over the past few years, she has observed the students’ interests overshadowed by individuals’ interests in gaining power over the school district for personal endeavors.

“Some of the actions of these few cost the Edison taxpayers $500,000,” she said.

She said this year she was pleased that the current board majority and board president installed an interim superintendent and then a permanent one.

“The current board was instrumental in proving to the public that a successful and stable board could be efficient and transparent,” she said. “We need to continue this trend in order to bring the focus back to the students.”

The most important issue the district faces, she said, is providing a better education for the students.

She said the rankings done by New Jersey Monthly magazine for Edison High School and John P. Stevens High School is “appalling,” with Edison ranking No. 169 and J.P. Stevens No. 65 out of 322 public high schools in the state.

“Strangely, only 79 percent of the students at J.P. Stevens go on to continue education at a four-year-college,” she said. “In light of the current job market and these statistics, we need to do more to prepare our students for the future.”

Shah noted that at present, the country “does not produce enough skilled workers.”

“As a result, we have been importing workers and/or exporting jobs to countries outside the United States,” she said. “Jobs are being outsourced to countries where labor is half the price that it is in the United States.”

She said this change in the global market has and will continue to affect students in Edison.

“We have to make the school system better so our future [students] may be able to survive in this global market,” she said.

To make the school district competitive in the global market, Shah said, “our students in Edison need to not only be up to speed in academics, but be able to speak multiple languages such as French, German, Hindi and Chinese, learn about other cultures and be adept with the ever-changing technology.”

“Every student in the Edison school system must have the opportunity to pursue further education at a four-year college,” she said “A well-rounded education not only includes the academics, but athletics, art, music and extracurricular activities.”

William H. Van Pelt

Van Pelt, 66, is seeking his third term. He and his wife, Joan, have three adult children. He has lived in the township for 56 years and is retired as an educator and administrator with the Edison Public Schools.

He said his educational insight is helpful in understanding the complexities of curriculum. His experience extends from 35 years as an educator in the schools and six years on the board, where he has learned to understand and make the tough decisions.

The current board member said he believes the biggest issue for the district is the overcrowding in the schools.

“The most critical issue is in the elementary grades, where grasping the fundamentals is critical to the education growth of the young mind,” he said. “This year’s budget has an increase in the number of new teaching positions in an attempt to keep class sizes at a reasonable number so that our teachers can continue to give the proper attention and instruction to our young students, especially with differential instruction being a critical factor in the development of the elementary child.”

Van Pelt said the key to reducing or preventing the “mega size” elementary school is the construction of new facilities. He said as chairperson of the board’s long-term facility committee, he and the superintendent are looking into two issues that would help reduce overcrowding. These include purchasing land and building a new elementary school. Nine acres of land are available off Talmadge Road, which he said is ample space for a building and road access. The other issue involves the old Camp Kilmer site, where the administration is investigation additional buildings for acquisition to help with the overcrowding issue.

“Both of these issues, to be successful, would require a referendum in the future, which requires the community to realize the importance of education in the elementary grades and support a referendum,” he said.

Lois Yukna

Yukna, 57, and her husband, James, have two children. She has lived in the township for 27 years. She is a driver, trainer and safety coordinator.

She said she believes the top issue the school district faces is a lack of adequate funding to maintain a quality education.

“Edison has not received its fair share of state funding, and we must continuously work within the perimeters of the budget to provide the necessary resources, in addition to a challenging curriculum, so all our children succeed,” she said.

Yukna added that it takes parental and family involvement, along with the whole education community, to be successful.

“Aquality education is an investment in the future,” she said.

Yukna said she would lobby the local legislators to see that Edison receives its proper share of funding.

“I will work diligently to see that the school district is run efficiently by making good, sound financial and educational decisions,” she said.