“This election should not be about who is for or against the superintendent of schools, it should be about the kids,” said Sudhan Thomas, a candidate for the Board of Education along with Gina Verdibello and Angel Valentin on the Education Matters ticket.
Education Matters, a ticket calling itself Jersey City United, and a number of independent candidates are seeking to fill three seats in the Nov. 8 election.
Incumbents Micheline Amy, Jessica Daye, and Ellen Simon, first elected in 2013 with strong support from Mayor Steven Fulop, have decided not to run for reelection, with at least one of them saying the toxic atmosphere caused by the board members who oppose Superintendent of Schools Dr. Marcia Lyles is the reason. Amy, Daye, and Simon are considered strong Lyles supporters
Some members of Jersey City United have expressed strong support for Lyles, whose contract was renewed in a controversial lame duck session last December before a new, less supportive board was sworn-in.
Thomas, however, said the election is not about Lyles.
“She is the superintendent, and we will have to work with her,” he said.
The group has received powerful endorsements
Education Matters has received hefty endorsements from the Jersey City Education Association (JCEA), Mayor Fulop, and from both the police and fire unions.
Angel Valentin, a former school board member running with Education Matters, said this election is about community service and doing what is best for the community. He is a certified social worker and has worked in the Jersey City Employment Training Program, Catholic Community Services, the YWCA of Hudson County, and other organizations. He served as a member of the Board of Education from 2002 to 2014.
“We need to prepare students for the real world.” – Sudhan Thomas
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Of the three, Thomas is the newcomer, a single parent and first time candidate, who wants the district to step back a bit from its headlong plunge into a college-only philosophy currently being offered. Thomas wants the district to evaluate students on what they need and want, and provide them with alternative career choices.
A lot of issues
The three candidates are running on a platform citing “true equality, diversity, mental health, and the three c’s (career, college and corporate readiness.)”
Toward these goals they include improving school facilities, providing better food options, more family outreach, appropriate technology, transportation, and effective after school programs.
In their platform statement, the group said the school district has to “embrace and celebrate,” cultures and lifestyles and provide a safe space for LBGTQ students. This means educating students to embrace difference through shared educational learning experiences.
Financial cutbacks to the district, they say, have resulted in lost social services that put at risk the mental health of students. The group says they will seek ways to restore some of those services.
The most controversial aspect of their campaign is their plan to provide alternatives to college for students who may want to seek other career paths. This would include more focus on trades and seeking internships for student who might want to pursue a career that does not involve college.
“We need to prepare students for the real world,” Thomas said.
Valentin said the district once provided trades training through shop classes that allowed students to learn crafts such as home and auto repair. Most of this, he said, has been abandoned to push kids into attending college.
Many kids are technology savvy, and yet might not want to go to college. Valentin said there are 135 technology companies in Jersey City with which the district might set up apprentice programs, allowing these students to find high paying jobs in the future.
The group also believes fire and police departments should be allowed to recruit kids at the high school level, giving them a bridge into possible careers as public servants.
“College is one pathway, but there are more than one pathway to a career,” Thomas said.
The group said the district’s focus on testing is robbing kids of creativity and that there has to be a better way to provide an education.
“We want to teach students to prepare them for life, not to prepare them for a test,” Thomas said.
Holding charter schools accountable
Thomas said the group is opposed to a proposed voucher system that would drain even more funding from traditional public schools into charter schools – which often do not accommodate special needs and other students.
He said the district needs to find a way to make sure if charter schools are being paid for a certain number of students the schools must actually have them on their rolls. He said sometimes schools get funded at the beginning of a school year based on a certain population of students, only to send back some of those students.
“But those schools still get funding based on the number they started with,” he said.
Verdibello said the district needs to better utilize its schools. Schools that are perceived as “better” or “safer” are often overcrowded, requiring the addition of trailers and other questionable facilities, while other schools in other parts of the city have plenty of space.
Thomas said a plan devised in 2006 conducted by the district a decade ago laid out a plan for the construction of 16 new schools, but the district to date has only cut the ribbon on one.
“I would rather be cutting the ribbon on 16 new schools than on one,” Thomas said.
Part of the problem, Verdibello said, is the state’s perception that the district has not adequately used the space it already has. She said all the schools should be brought up to the same standards for safety and quality, allowing students to fill empty seats in other schools.
Needed supplies are often not distributed. In many schools, parents are given a list of things they need to buy for their children to bring to school, such as toilet paper. Verdibello said the list is longer in some schools, than in others, but said parents and teachers should not be required to buy anything, especially when many of these items are in a district warehouse undistributed.
Al Sullivan may be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com.