Reflections on Board of Education Dynamics

Well, a Tranquil Month of May Will Be Welcome

Yesterday's 5 PM deadline, for submission of additional nominating petitions for the two Elwood Board of Education Trustee terms expiring this year, passed without any additional candidates.

Therefore, Joe Fusaro and Dan Ciccone will have no opponents on the ballot for the May 19th Election and Budget Vote.

Naturally it would be conjecture, since I never took Mind-Reading 101 in college, to give a single reason for this unopposed election. But it is both reasonable, and appropriate, to provide a few possible reasons, one or more of which is likely to be the predominant factor.

First, let's look at the momentum factor, for which there is ample evidence.

Joe and Dan first ran for election to the Board in 2003, and ran against two incumbents, one whom was a long-standing Trustee and the other a Trustee for merely one year. Both challengers were part of a movement to create change in the district, and each won election by comfortable margins, Joe Fusaro by 301 votes and Dan Ciccone by 138 votes.

In 2006 they were challenged by two candidates who were allied, to greater or lesser degrees, to other incumbent Trustees opposed to many of the reforms, and calls for accountability, that Joe and Dan were able to initiate when their 2003 election brought a reform majority to the Board. Despite some deplorable tactics aimed at maligning Mr. Fusaro, both Joe and Dan increased their margins of victory, Joe Fusaro to 319 votes and Dan Ciccone to 341 votes.

Now, a betting person might look at that trend, and consider that momentum, and ask “why do I want to expend all of that energy and time and still lose, and by an embarrassing margin?”

Second, let's look at accomplishments over the past six years, and imagine ourselves as a potential contender asking herself or himself whether there is good reason to even oppose these two incumbents.

Recognizing that any board of education can only set policy, and establish goals, and call for greater accountability, but are limited in their success by the cooperation and professionalism of those administrators which report to the board, Elwood's Board of Education has created much greater openness, candor, citizen participation, staff participation, and willingness to consider alternatives using a Best Practices philosophy.

The democratic initiatives, about which I have written before, have given greater opportunities to everyone to better understand what is happening in each Board meeting and to better participate in those meetings.

As an example, we now have the three “Board books,” which are made available to residents at the Regular Meeting, which have the non-confidential enclosures which the Board has before them; this information was previously unknown to residents, leaving a mystery of what the heck these people were talking about.

We also have two Residents Remarks periods at Regular Meetings, one at the beginning and one at the end, to give residents, or staff, or visitors, a better opportunity to comment before, and after, discussions or actions by the Board.

We also have five subcommittees of the Board, and several other District and Board committees, which allow participation by residents as well as, in the case of applicable areas such as curriculum, non-resident staff. But it is much more than mere participation, since these subcommittees and committees even flourish and depend upon the various talents of residents, thereby adding a broad knowledge base to what the Trustees and District Administration themselves bring to these various areas.

And I could go on, but this is enough of an illustration of what I regard as a second reason not to run in opposition to Joe or Dan, since they have, together with the other three incumbents, already done a great deal to bring greater democracy to Elwood, as well as bring a more holistic approach to improving education in Elwood through the creation of better dialogue with parents and other stakeholders.

Third, there was a flurry of interest last year, when the subject of a possible Full Day Kindergarten program, badly structured and even more badly unveiled by the prior District Administration, created so much emotion with so little intellectual rigor, that some people were persuaded to run for the Board of Education on what was effectively a single issue platform.

This year our Board of Education took control of the FDK consideration process early on, and imposed proper governance controls and accountability on the current District Administration, and made sure that it would be structured in such a way as to be fiscally responsible (it was far from that last year), and creatively organized to satisfy both those who wanted this expansion from Elwood's current Extended Day Kindergarten program as well as those who were concerned about having their children in a kindergarten program that would be beyond the scale appropriate for very young children.

If I understand the model correctly, it seems very close to the kind of creative and adaptive Full Day Kindergarten program which the Cold Spring Harbor school district created in recent years.

With our Board of Education now having accomplished that in the 2009/10 proposed school budget, there was very little reason for the aggressive FDK advocates in the community to throw opposing candidates up before any incumbent running this year.

So, for powerful momentum reasons, and for persuasive democracy and citizen participation reasons, and for preemptive single-issue focus reasons, there was more than enough there to persuade someone to decide to not run against Joe or Dan.

But, for whatever definitive reason that one or more persons so chose, we can be grateful that this District, and this Board of Education, will continue to have the very dedicated and innovative services of Joe Fusaro and Dan Ciccone for the next three years.

Our Board has many challenges, and many areas where strong and wise leadership will be needed as Elwood goes forward.

Sitting back on our collective haunches, and engaging in intellectual navel gazing, or mythologizing about some past glories, is not an option for our Board, nor for our administrative staff, nor for our teaching staff. Time does not stand still, and our students are facing greater and greater challenges in both the college experience as well as in the workplace.

Moreover, despite the fact that we the taxpayers directly pay for most of the expenses of running this district, with smaller and smaller support from the State (which comes from us, anyway, indirectly), we only get to choose the members of the Board of Education. We depend upon the Board to make the best choices possible regarding those hired to lead the District and to teach our children, and we wish them great success in these very challenging times.

Thank you so much to Mike Kaszubski, and Joe Fusaro, and Dan Ciccone, and Andrew Kaplan, and Patty Matos. They are a great credit to the people, and children, of the Elwood School District.

Jerry Hannon