Candidate for
Member, Board of Education; Mount Vernon City School District

My professional backgkround has been in quality management and quality improvement - devising strategies to maximize efficiencies and minimize inefficiencies and unwanted events, usually effectuated through data management and data analysis.

School Safety

My philosophy is not about parents deciding to provide what they feel is a better education for their child. It's about the incidents that are occuring in and around our schools. The incidents in our schools are the main facator parents take into account when deciding where to send their children to school. Consider that the average parent who sends their child to school at Fordham Prep would rather take the chance that their child will be safer in the Bronx on the streets of Fordham Road and Webster Avenue than in the halls of our high schools. We cannot afford to allow that to continue to be true. The district has in its possession the information, the tools, and the human resources that it needs to put together an affirmative interdiction plan to reduce the incidents in and around our schools. As an administrator of a residential treatment facility, I reduced the number of our incidents by fifty percent in a few months through the use of data management and data analysis. As a school board trustee I will introduce a policy proposition that would require the district to enact an interdiction program similar to the one with which I was so successful. For example, we must take the thousands of incident reports that have been lying dormant in a file cabinet and load that information into a database. The database would allow its user to determine the incident trends and nuances. It will allow security staff to detect, for example, which students are generating the most incidents within a certain tme period, on certain days such as between 1pm and 3pm and Mondays. Armed with this information, the security staff will be able to interdict any trends or nuances that can be detected by the database. With regard to incidents occuring around our schools, we are well aware of the troubling scenes most of us have observed watching the junior high school children as they congregage on certain venues in Mount Vernon, disturbing buisineses and pedestrians. I will propose an expansion of an already existing student code of conduct, which, as you know, is required. I have looked into the legality of modifiying the code of conduct to be effective from 7am to 5pm within a certain parameter of our schools.

Problem Solving

Our present school board has been mired in continuing its problem solving regimen inherited from previous school board members, and so on. I have not observed the problem solving techiniques that we require, such as policy analysis. This process, when done correctly informs a body whether or not its current policies regarding a certain subject matter is adequate to protect the interests of the students and the district. Many of our policies have not been able to hold up under the pressures of new developments both within and without the school system, such as economic pressures, but nevertheless affect the way the district functions. Adequate problem solving techinques saves time, careers, and the educational lives of the students. I have observed school board meetings devote so much time to the passage of resolutions authorizing the superintendent to move relatively small amounts of money from one line item to another. I have observed the board spend hours doing this, when time would have been better spent problem solving our student relate incidents, for example. I will propose and advocate the passing of a resolution authorizing the superintendent to move amounts of money up to a certain amount without board approval providing that three requirements are met: 1. the amount of money that is being moved will fund at least 90% of the line item receiving the funds; 2. the amount is less than a proscribed amount say, $4,999; 3. the line item being funded will produce a measured outcome. For example, funding a budge line item to purchase some type of construction equipment requires that the purchase will improve the functioning of a piece of equipment by 50%. My proposal ensures that there will be a measured outcome attached to any budget line item manipulated by the superintendent without board approval. This is just one example of a problem solving strategy that the board should adopt so that the problem of not having enough time to address pressing issues is either solved or sufficiently addressed.

Tax Payer Support

As you know, our tax payers are required to fund the school district. What you may not know is that when a quality improvement study is conducted, the most commonly found facor of apathy is the abence of inclusion. We have that problem with our tax payers. I beleive that our tax payers have been taken for granted and have not been included in the process at a meaningful level. Fortunately, my proposal to answer that issue does not require board approval. I will form one or more focus groups that will provide a venue for tax payers to voice their concerns about the value that they are getting for the tax dollars they must pay. I go back to the measured outcome. Some of our budget line items could have a measure outcome attached to them. My previously used example is appropriate here, as well. Where we have budget line items autorizing the spending of millions of dollars for specific educator salaries, I beleive that that line item should produce a measured outcome for the expenditure of those millions of dollars. For example,if we spend ten million dollars for special education salaries, we should expect that the expenditure of that money will produce somehting that we can measure - a measured outcome- such as a five percent increase in the readint scores of those special ed students, for example. This would add value to the tax dollars that tax payers must remit to the school district. Of course, we cannot attach a measured outcome to every budget line item, but we can start looking at where we can start. We can begin to look at how we can bring value to the funders of our school district.

I plan to work with the current superintendent to ensure that his comprehensive plan is matched to the needs of the district thorugh appropriate and effective policy dvelopment. Most, if not all of my proposals do not require legislative approval, just only the courage of other board members to break away from their usual problem solving strategies and enact policies that will effectuate effective problem solving for our district. Effective problem solving translates into improved outcomes for out children, value for our tax payers, and safer schools.