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Before voters head to the polls on November 3rd, the six candidates for the Board of Education took the stage Tuesday night at Central Middle School.
The League of Women Voters of Greenwich and the PTA Council co-sponsored the event.
School board Vice Chairman Jennifer Dayton, Gaetane Francis, a former chairwoman of the PTA Council’s Advanced Learning Program Committee; and Anthony Lopez, a special-education professional assistant at Greenwich High School, are the Democrats competing for two of their party’s seats on the board.
School board Chairman Barbara O’Neill, school board member Peter von Braun and former Greenwich High PTA co-president Lauren Rabin are the Republicans running for two GOP seats.
The candidates answered a dozen questions including ways to close the achievement gap, class size and facility use and what is the most pressing issue facing Greenwich Public Schools.
“I think the most pressing issue facing the school system right is the adjust to the school start times to times that are appropriate to each of the groups of students,”said Peter von Braun.
“I think the most pressing issue facing us now is in the area of academics,” said Anthony Lopez. “Not that we are failing academically but we are implementing a new system where we are moving to a new form of learning.”
“I think the most important issue that faces the school system any time is student achievement. That is what the Board of Education focuses on,” said Barbara O’Neill. “We have two jobs. One, to hire the superintendent and the other is to focus on student achievement.”
Jennifer Dayton said, “We need to bridge the entry [into the school system], the movement through the school system and the exit. This is help us bridge the achievement gap and I feel very strongly that digital learning is another tool that will help us bridge the distance in the classroom.”
Lauren Rabin said, “The most important priority for the school system is to improve academics and social emotional learning for all students.”
Geatane Francis said, “ One of the things we have lost in this district is giving the classroom and those students two teachers. They are there to dedicate themselves to the benefit of the students and I feel that we have become so structured in how we do things that we have lost a lot of what makes learning exciting.”
School start times, a hot button issue this election season, was also addressed.
“I think that the main thing here is communication. This is going to effect the entire population of our public schools,” said Lopez. “It is going to effect students, teachers, staff members, bus drivers. It is going to effect the Town. We have to look at this from a holistic perspective and we have to make sure the lines of communication are open and that we are respecting every, single point on this.”
“School start times is sort of the litmus test,”said O’Neil. “We all swear we are all in favor of school start times which we are but I think it is a very complex issue and right now there are six options out there that people are discussing. I agree that it is all about communication. We have to hear from everybody and those who don’t want a change, have to have an environment where they feel comfortable to come forth and express a different point of view.”
“I am supportive of school start times changing if we get additional funding,” said Dayton. “What the proponents are not telling you is that there is money in the budget we are currently developing to put school start times in the budget with the high transportation costs associated. Any candidate who tells you we can accomplish this change at no cost, I would be very wary of voting for.”
“Let’s face it, change is going to be hard. Yes there is the financial impact. What are the priorities of school start times with respect to other initiatives that the school is trying to accomplish. I agree with Jennifer that the budget is finite. We only have an increase of 2% and if the salaries raise higher level that 2% then something has to give,”said Rabin. “But I definitely think that you can’t put a price tag on the health of our children.”
“What I would like to see is for us to take the science, some common sense, the input that we have gotten so far and trying to have a bus consultant give us some good options,” said Francis. “We have a steering committee that is working very hard to find all the problems that could come from this change. I think that is a good exercise to do because we want to understand what we need to work on and how to make it right.”
“Recently I proposed that we hire a transportation expert to work on the development of a plan to execute later school start times,” said von Braun. “The board said it was impossible to pay the $25,000 it would cost to do this. Basically, when one talks about this program, one has to recognize that there are ways of achieving this without huge cost.”
Stay with the Greenwich Sentinel for continued election coverage. For more information about the November 3rd election, you can visit the League of Women Voters Greenwich.
