On the Issues: Gabrielle Mason for Dobbs Ferry BOE

By Gabrielle Mason

In-depth answers to issues questions from the Journal News online Election Guide

Challenge One: PROVIDING AN APPROPRIATE, HIGH QUALITY EDUCATION TO NURTURE, CHALLENGE AND INSPIRE EACH OF OUR 1450 STUDENTS TO REACH THEIR HIGHEST POTENTIAL

Guided by the educational experts we have put in place, we must focus constructively on implementation, support and assessment of research-based, data-driven, child-centered curriculum and programming to best serve all our children. (Fix what's broken, improve what works.)

Some specific elements of this ever-evolving challenge in the coming years: A-Facilitating successful incorporation of new educational leaders (Superintendent, Springhurst & MS Principals, Dir. Curriculum & Instruction). B-Recruiting, developing, evaluating and retaining the most effective teachers. C-Ensuring appropriate class sizes, supports & effectively differentiated instruction to meet all learner's needs. D-Providing depth and breadth of curriculum & extracurricular activities to "fire up" all our kids + particularly challenging in a small district. E-Working for testing to serve its primary function: to drive instruction. F-Successful planning and implementation for the new Common Core Standards and APPR (Annual Personnel Performance Review) + making these massive state-mandated overhauls work to strengthen, rather than combat, effective programming and management of personnel.

Challenge Two: FUNDING HIGH QUALITY PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR ALL IN OUR DISTRICT DESPITE RISING COSTS, SHRINKING STATE AID AND SPRIALING UNFUNDED/UNDERFUNDED MANDATES

As recent years' budgets reflect, Dobbs Ferry is in a uniquely strong position despite the economic crisis plus national priorities & a state funding structure that are broken at the core. Fiscal responsibility to struggling taxpayers necessitates our strongest efforts to further economize without compromising our primary mission of providing high quality education for all.

Top priorities and initiatives are two-pronged:

1: Strategic use+ and growth - of limited resources A-Continuing top budgeting efficiency, long-range planning and cost-effective management. B-Pursuing all additional sources of revenue: grant funding, corporate, community. C-Expanding shared services, cooperative programming and creative partnerships inside + and outside + our village. D-Maintaining healthy reserve funds and creating new reserves to the greatest extent possible + fiscally and legally. E-Learning from and building upon recommendations and expertise of our exceptional finance team: Director of Finance, Sylvia Fassler-Wallach; central administration and BOE incumbents; with assistance from our ad hoc budget advisory committee. F-Recruiting increased productive involvement by financial experts in our community to assist the Dobbs Ferry team.

2: Pairing district-specific knowledge with taxpayer political power to create targeted legislative action for local control; increased federal/state funding; and decreased federal-and state-mandated fiscal/educational obstacles to address the approx. 75% of our budget currently outside direct district control.

Challenge Three: PRODUCTIVE COLLABORATION OF ALL STAKEHOLDERS TO ACCOMPLISH 1 & 2

We must continue to rise above our differences to better enable all stakeholders to collaborate productively on common goals: ensuring optimum student achievement and experience with utmost fiscal responsibility. This applies to every element of our school functioning, most notably: A. Continuing BOE/Superintendent alignment & partnership in fulfilling the district's mission. B. Effective contract negotiations. C. Increasing positive involvement of individual parents and our vital parent organizations. E. Strengthening functional, factual, two-way communication between stakeholders.
1. Exploring expanded communications strategies, such as the Key Communicator Network.
2. Fully engaging our PTSA as primary parent voice & connector.   Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed a 2 percent cap on annual property tax increases. Do you think this is a good idea or bad idea?

I firmly believe the tax cap is an insupportable idea. School districts are caught between a rock and a hard place: escalating costs, shrinking revenues, slashed funding, spiraling un- and underfunded mandates, unsustainable collectively-bargained personnel costs and impediments to fiscally-responsible local control on one side; strained national & local economies and lower-income residential taxpayers struggling desperately to afford to stay in their homes on the other.

Removing the district's ability to raise money necessary to fulfill its mission to provide quality education for all our children is not a solution; it is an avoidance of the real problems.

Our state's fiscal woes must not be remedied at the expense of our children's education and struggling taxpayers' ability to pay.

Responsibility to our children and community doesn't evaporate until the economic picture improves, in fact, it becomes more crucial. Until + and unless + our federal/state school funding models are redesigned, our tax structure is overhauled, non-education spending is controlled and/or massive amounts of money drop from the skies, our schools must somehow pay for free and appropriate public education of all our children.

In my opinion, Governor Cuomo's 2% tax cap proposal adds to problems instead of creating solutions, adding a smokescreen and distraction from our schools, and state's, greater challenges.

Note: Due to excellent budgeting and fiscal management leading to .47 % decrease in spending over the previous year without cutting staff or programs, Dobbs Ferry's proposed tax rate increase of 1.81% would fall below a 2% tax cap.

  With respect to school district finances, are there any specific initiatives you would pursue to save money or reduce expenses? (If you are an incumbent, please tell us what specific initiatives you have supported in this regard.)

• * Though not an incumbent, I am already involved as a parent leader: As a concerned community member, I am leading a collaborative parent/school effort for targeted legislative advocacy to address state-mandated fiscal/educational obstacles. Already this spring, we have met with Assemblyman Abinanti & his chief of staff to deliver and discuss a district-specific letter adding our voices to the call for addressing unsustainable cost drivers while highlighting specific unfunded state mandates with zero positive impact on our students. Ongoing short-range goals include: collaborative refinement of letters, wider distribution to key players in Albany, facilitation of a mass Dobbs Ferry taxpayer letter-writing campaign, and partnering with other districts and organizations to improve efficacy of legislative action.

Top priorities and initiatives are two-pronged:

1: Strategic use+ and growth - of limited resources A-Continuing top budgeting efficiency, long-range planning and cost-effective management. B-Pursuing all additional sources of revenue: grant funding, corporate, community. C-Expanding shared services, cooperative programming and creative partnerships inside + and outside + our village. D-Maintaining healthy reserve funds and creating new reserves to the greatest extent possible + fiscally and legally. E-Learning from and building upon recommendations and expertise of our exceptional finance team: Director of Finance, Sylvia Fassler-Wallach; central administration and BOE incumbents; with assistance from our ad hoc budget advisory committee. F-Recruiting increased productive involvement by financial experts in our community to assist the Dobbs Ferry team.

2: Pairing district-specific knowledge with taxpayer political power to create targeted legislative action for local control; increased federal/state funding; and decreased federal-and state-mandated fiscal/educational obstacles to address the approx. 75% of our budget currently outside direct district control. A- Initiative: pairing district-specific knowledge with taxpayer political power for most effective legislative advocacy.

• * Though not an incumbent, I am already involved as a parent leader: As a concerned community member, I am leading a collaborative parent/school effort for targeted legislative advocacy to address state-mandated fiscal/educational obstacles. Already this spring, we have met with Assemblyman Abinanti & his chief of staff to deliver and discuss a district-specific letter adding our voices to the call for addressing unsustainable cost drivers while highlighting specific unfunded state mandates with zero positive impact on our students. Ongoing short-range goals include: collaborative refinement of letters, wider distribution to key players in Albany, facilitation of a mass Dobbs Ferry taxpayer letter-writing campaign, and partnering with other districts and organizations to improve efficacy of legislative action.

All stakeholders agree + and all research supports - that keeping the most effective teachers in the classroom is paramount to best educate our students. I have the strongest possible respect, admiration and appreciation for good teachers, of which we have many. Everyone benefits from an appropriate compensation and management structure to ensure the most fundamental part of good schools: good teachers (supported by excellent administrators).

That being said, I am frustrated by elements collectively-bargained at the state level and with many impediments to local control of personnel compensation and management, as well as obstacles to effective contract negotiation on the local level.

Skyrocketing pension and health insurance costs, together with limitations on employee contributions, are unsustainable in the current economic situation. Salary increase structures that cannot respond to district finances are another major problem, particularly the Triborough Amendment which stipulates that step increases (and all contract elements) remain in force until a new contract goes into effect, thus putting districts/taxpayers at a significant disadvantage and removing unions' incentives to reach equitable agreements in a timely manner.

Tenure is, of course, another sticking point. I believe it may be prudent to purse a former Westchester-Putnam School Board Association proposal of a five-year tenure review with five-year renewable terms as an appropriate next step in helping the tenure system to function more effectively and I look forward to ongoing learning and debate about how tenure might be reformed to best serve all stakeholders.

How teachers are evaluated + using what criteria and by whom + is another major issue, particularly as high-stakes testing is increasingly used to narrow assessment of real teaching skill and efficacy. The new APPR further complicates this issue, again lessening local control and putting disproportionate emphasis on state tests. On the flip side, as suggested by Dobbs Ferry's incoming Superintendent - Dr. Lisa Brady - more stringent teacher evaluation (when properly devised and developed in collaboration with teachers) can be a more powerful, timely tool for making sure it is the best teachers that are kept in our classrooms.

Regarding staffing structure and salaries for our top administrators, Dobbs Ferry is experiencing some controversy in the community. In brief, I firmly believe that excellent education cannot be had without excellence in school district administration and that it is in our students' best interest to pay what is necessary + though not a dollar more + to retain excellent administrators. Exactly how those duties should be arranged is + again + a highly complicated endeavor requiring extensive factual knowledge and a deep understanding of our district's many interlocking parts and how they are best "oiled" + directed and supported - to promote student achievement and efficient operation of schools.

Again, productive collaboration and targeted legislative action offer the best hope for real solutions. As much of the nation is embroiled in battles that alternately + and counterproductively - villainize teachers, administrators, BOEs, parents and communities, I am encouraged by the Dobbs Ferry leadership team's good faith efforts in this arena.

I am in accordance with our district's direction regarding personnel issues, though I would hope to help us become even more proactive in advocating for local control and I would support increased efforts to develop personnel practices that keep the best administrators, teachers and staff working at utmost efficiency for our district children.   What is your assessment of the school district's academic offerings? What do you see as the school district's strengths and weaknesses? How would you, if at all, reorder priorities?

According to the district's current mission statement: "The Mission of the Dobbs Ferry School District is to provide a high quality education whereby all students are empowered to reach their individual potential, respect and value themselves and others, and become life-long learners."

I fully support Dobbs Ferry's current mission and priorities.

The "all" and "individual potential" in that mission statement together form a driving force for our educational system, as it must to fulfill the central promise and responsibility of public education. Further, I am both proud and grateful that our district has worked so diligently to move + and stay - ahead of the curve in educational philosophy and data-driven, research-supported, best practices to benefit all our students.

There is always room + and need - for improvement in implementation: refining curriculum, programming and methodology; evolving staff training and development; fixing what's broken and improving what works to appropriately nurture, challenge and inspire every one of our 1450 students.

Data, personal experience and information gathered through my involvement in our school community informs my understanding that academic offerings, staff development and curricular cohesion are strong in Springhurst Elementary School; that the Middle School has made significant progress but can use continued attention to increasing rigor and refining programming; and that we have many exceptional programs in our high school but should devote continued attention to consistency of teaching and refining curriculum to make sure that all High School students can be fully supported and challenged to best prepare them for productive, fulfilling lives after school. (Expanding shared services and cooperative programming - with nearby districts and through technology + is a goal I hope we will continue to pursue in order to improve breadth of offerings in the upper grades.)

As for specifics, I always believe we should fix what's broken and improve what works. A few specific areas that require additional attention include Tenth Grade Trigonometry and 8th Grade English Language Arts. Notable strengths include the IB program implemented 13 years ago in our High School + the gold standard for encouraging critical thinking skills and global-mindedness in secondary education - as well as Singapore Math and the FLES foreign language programs at Springhurst.

Our "team" is our most effective tool for accurate assessment to remedy specific weaknesses while building upon the many strengths of our educational system... and for vision of what we can aspire to for our district's future. I believe that productive collaboration by our educational experts + administration and teachers + and Board of Education, together with informed parent/community partners, is THE primary requirement for continued academic growth.