Elections for the city schools’ Board of Education will be held April 17. Twenty-four hopefuls will be vying for three, three-year seats. Those elected will help determine the course of the schools as they slowly make a transition from state takeover.
The Reporter asked candidates to stake out their positions on issues that face the schools in a written survey. Following are those who sent responses back:
Sonia Araujo
Araujo, 50, a librarian and an incumbent on the board, feels that “one of the most pressing issues that is confronting the board members and the school system is the return to local control.” She said the city has become “guinea pigs” as a result of the state takeover.
Araujo wants to establish a “better line of communication” with management teams and the implementation of Whole School Reform. She wants to create incentives to attract new teachers, like increasing salaries, assisting in payment of student loans and reimbursement for continuing education. She would like to find permanent school sites, and eliminate the use of trailers for schoolhouses.
Aggressive land acquisition is needed, she said. She stated that standardized testing should not be “used as punitive but instead used as positive means of measuring the accomplishments of our children and teachers.”
Edward Cheatam
Cheatam, a 53-year-old retired Port Authority Police Officer and Vietnam veteran, said he intends to increase parental involvement and ensure all schools are technologically equipped. He wants to foster a “spirit of cooperation” between administration and teachers, expand recreational opportunities, return the schools to local control, get new schools built, and have smaller classes and better security.
Terrence Curran
A 30-year-old police officer, Curran would “like to work to increase parental involvement, to return the schools to local control, to address issues in special education, to increase the recreational and after school educational opportunities,” and to improve school facilities.
Sergio Lamboy
Lamboy, a 52-year-old Jersey City Fire Department captain, said he would address “the lack of inclusion of neighborhood groups in the decision making process,” particularly in the case of charter school creation. He said inclusion is “essential to the atmosphere of positive community involvement and not to include them creates hostility and distrust.”
Lamboy said that he would use Community Development monies for “their originally intended purpose. Not some imagined benefit to the charter schools at the expense of more needier community organizations who are in real need of the funds.”
Lamboy said he supports the current charter schools, but that a “moratorium” should be placed on building any new ones “until our public schools are in order educationally and structurally.”
Ocilean Pitchford
Pitchford, a 53-year-old guidance counselor at Hudson County Schools of Technology, wants to “help return our schools to home rule and ensure promising futures for our children.” He would also “provide our children with the materials and technology they need to learn in facilities that are comfortable, safe and state-of the art.”
Pitchford would “make sure our taxes are used for Jersey City Public Schools and not for privatization of schools.” He would like to “establish policies that will enable teachers and school administrators to perform their jobs more effectively, initiate programs for first-year teachers so they will be successful and remain in education.”
Pitchford wishes to “establish after-school programs that nurture young minds and provide skills that can be utilized throughout life.”
Jeffrey M. Weingarten
Weingarten “would like to see all of our students spend at least one period, each day, with computers and help those families who can’t afford one, obtain a computer for their homes.” He wants “to re-visit and re-evaluate the paradigm of standardized testing.”
Weingarten also is interested in allocating funds “immediately to repair and maintain all our school buildings in a clean and safe condition.” He believes “character development and civility should be made a part of the curricula for all students in all grades.”
Weingarten said he also wants to “expand innovative magnet and charter schools, do more to teach AIDS/HIV awareness and prevention” and hopes to “initiate a poster campaign – throughout the district – showing some of the multitude of successful Jersey City residents of different colors and ethnic backgrounds as realistic role models.”
Others on the ballot
Joining those listed above on the ballot will be: Agnes Ballon, James P. Bolden, Edward Cabrera, Brandon Escobar, Nicholas Gerardi, David Hoffman, Rosalyn McFarland, John Minella, Madeline Rentas, David Riscart, Salvatore Riggi, Yolanda Rivera, Stella Scuzzese, Patrick G. Stamato, Momotaro Tito Torres, Clifford Wadleigh, Jr., John J. Walsh, and Howard Zuzio.