Welcome to the second installment of our 2011 Meet the Candidates series for Medford K-8 Board of Education hopefuls.
This week, we asked candidates…
1.) If elected, what would be your top priorities?
2.) Do you have any cost-cutting or revenue-generating ideas that might help the school district address future budget challenges?
Here’s what they said:
Katherine Santamore
1. My major goal is and always has been to provide a quality, competitive education for all our Medford students at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayers. As an educator, I know research points to the importance of low class size for academic success, and keeping our classes small has always been another of my top priorities.
2. As a district, Medford has been a recognized leader in cost-cutting for many, many years. Our shared services, biodiesel fuel initiative, district energy manager and recent solar project are only a few of the countless innovations we have implemented to cut costs. I am proud to have played a part in all these projects and I am currently involved actively in several Board Projects directed at generating alternative revenue sources.
Ann Davidson
My main purpose for wanting to serve on the Board of Education and therefore my most important priority is to provide a high quality education for the children of Medford. At the same time, my goal is to balance this with fiscal restraint. I come to the voters not only with a background of educational knowledge , but with over a decade of results in fiscal responsibility. I am a taxpayer myself and understand how important it is to keep taxes under control.
Because I highly value student achievement and success, another one of my top priorities is maintaining small class size. I have been instrumental, during many very difficult budget years, in maintaining the integrity of our schools instructional program and keeping class sizes at optimal levels, while being a fiscal watchdog. It is vital to have a student-teacher ratio that promotes the best learning environment for children.
I believe it is very important to strive for excellence in education, and although we are a highly regarded school district in the State of New Jersey, we must always seek to do better. A priority of mine is to be forward-looking, mindful of a positive version for the future of our schools and our community.
In these challenging financial times, the board must be more engaged than ever in seeking out and putting in place more cost efficiencies to reduce expenses. All programs and services must be further evaluated and every budget line item examined.
I have been and continue to be an advocate for the important use of alternative revenue sources, such as our solar initiative project which has no new tax impact to the community and will provide millions of dollars of revenue for the district in the future. Another example of a sustainable revenue source, put in place during my term in office, is our pioneering biodiesel fuel program for school busses. This program saves fuel costs and lessens adverse effects on the environment. It is essential to the school district’s future that programs and initiatives such as these be maintained and others actively sought out to be implemented by the Board.
I support the use of shared services and cooperative purchasing agreements to help reduce costs. The Medford Township Public School District already engages in numerous approaches to the shared delivery of services and materials, such as the following examples: The Burlington County insurance pool, The Lenape consortium for copy paper and bulk purchase, shared transportation fuel, maintenance, repair and other services with surrounding area school districts, a trash and snow removal shared service with local government, and ACES-state consortium for the bulk purchase of electric and gas. We should pursue additional arrangements as active partners with other school districts, the community, and others to share resources.
The Board is currently investigating a professional advertising firm to encourage revenue generation through the sale of appropriate advertising on school spaces. I will use good judgment and business experience while analyzing this approach to increasing revenue sources.
I also greatly value the efforts and contributions of the Medford Home and School Association and The Medford Education Foundation-these relationships should be maintained and supported.
Other cost efficiencies that could be investigated are the leasing or renting of available school space, soliciting of sponsors for school events, corporate donations, appropriate advertising on our school website, sharing transportation with other districts, and increasing mail communications instead of generating hard copies.
I would also be interested in forming an ad hoc committee of parents, citizens, school employees and other stakeholders to formulate strategies and gather additional input, formulating ideas regarding revenue sources for our schools.
Salvatore Cocivera
1. As a member of the school board, my top priority would be to work with members of the board, administration, and community to continue developing additional sources of revenue. Currently, Medford residents contribute, via property taxes, more than 85 percent of the current school budget, while the state contributes only 8.64 percent. Although I would like to believe that future state funding levels will increase to equal what other districts receive, the reality is that this will not happen as long as Abbott funding rules exist. Therefore, if we want to maintain and improve our high level of education, it is up to the residents of Medford to devise ways to negate decreases in state education funding levels going forward.
2. My ideas to cut costs and/or generate revenue are as follows:
a. Allow individual school principals to raise funds for projects specific to their school’s needs as an enhancement to HSA fundraising efforts. Currently, if a school has a specific need, it cannot go to its parent advisory committee and begin a school-wide campaign to support its needs. Instead, a principal is forced to use funds allocated by the HSA, petition the school administration for additional funds, or, most likely, do without. My experience as a member of the Chairville community is that people are more likely to support a local cause that will effect their children directly, as opposed to the community, in general.
b. Petition the state to allow better performing districts such as Medford more autonomy in programming of unfunded mandates. By eliminating the need to fulfill unfunded mandates, this is a de facto, increase in revenue to the district. Why should we have to follow the same rules as the lesser performing districts if we are not funded at the same level?
c. Regarding employee benefit programs, we should consider hiring a fee only benefit consultant in place of paying commissions to insurance brokers. This might add up to a savings of 1 to 2 percent of our employee benefit costs.
d. Expansion of our solar initiatives maximizes our available space and intellectual capital. Also, work with the state to initiate the advertising initiatives as soon as possible. Each day that passes is a day of lost revenue, forever.
