Meet the Candidates Opening Statement

By Paul Doyle

Paul Doyle's opening statement from Meet the Candidates Night

My name is Paul Doyle...and I'm running for School Board. I have been married to my lovely wife Susan for nearly 18 years and we have four kids tactically deployed in the school district in Waverly, Greenvale, the Middle School, and the High School. Susan rebuffed the idea of adopting a child from Anne Hutch.

I have a degree in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University but I have spent my entire professional career in film and television production. Throughout my career I have dealt with the burden of producing to wildly high expectations with wickedly low budgets. I don't think I'd feel comfortable under any other circumstances. I am also intimately familiar with criticism. It is an integral part of the creative process.

I am running for the Board because I think I can help and know that I should. I have watched, as many of you have as well, as the community has polarized. Supporters of the board feel as though the opposition is stifling efforts to improve the district while those in opposition believe the board spends as much effort marginalizing opposition input as it does managing the district. Frankly, I don't find either assertion to be the case but as a firm believer that perception becomes reality I feel it is something we all need to deal with or we run the risk of putting good ideas from all parties in jeopardy.

Briefly, then some specifics on some of the ways we can begin to bridge the gap. First, me. I'm up here saying we need to communicate better...I better be willing to act and I already have begun in that effort reaching out to disparate groups to let them know that it is a priority and that I welcome the opportunity and challenge to be the bridge. More formally, I think we can better exploit the resources afforded us by public access television and the internet.

I have here a letter from the desk of one Marilyn C Terranova, the Superintendent Carmel Schools. In it Dr Terranova writes, `Involving our community in developing the vision and direction of the District was highly successful this past year. Ideas generated from our series of three Open Forums have been incorporated throughout the District.' I look forward to a letter similar to that from her as our superintendent.

Clearly, the issue of space is a hot topic and am sure that there are questions about it lurking out there in this fantastic turnout. I'll wait for those.

Recently, I attended a workshop held by the Westchester Putnam School Board Association. It was an enlightening exchange of ideas with people from three counties and while I took away many contacts and lessons that I'm sure will be valuable in the future there was a lightning bolt hidden in a single statistic that laid bare what may be our most significant challenge in the years ahead. For every dollar citizens of Westchester send to Albany for education, they get back thirteen cents, that's thirteen, one-three. The state average is 58 cents. Allegheny County gets two dollars and fifty-eight cents and don't hold your breath waiting for them to toss us some scraps to build classrooms for our kids. We have a problem, friends. We can budget as prudently as we want but if we're not getting our fair share from the state it just won't work.

We have a fiercely passionate and active community. It is an amazing collection of self +less individuals crammed into three square miles. Working with our new superintendent, we need to harness that resource and fight for what we need, what our kids deserve.

I'd like to close with an observation. You know, through all of the discourse there has been one cry that we haven't heard. It's the cry that our kids don't perform well in standardized tests; that they aren't well-equipped when they leave the halls of this building; that they're not succeeding in the real world. And the reason we're not hearing it is because they are performing and they are well-equipped and they are succeeding. We've got some pretty special kids in this district. They'll go as high as we let them. So, with your permission, your vote, I'd like to roll up my sleeves focus the debate and see just how high we can get these Eagles to soar.