S. Butler candidates discuss views
SAXONBURG — With teacher contract negotiations at a standstill and parents concerned about how the district is managing shrinking revenues and enrollment, candidates for South Butler School Board gathered at the Saxonburg Memorial Presbyterian Church Tuesday night, to talk about their visions for the district.
Four seats on the board are up for election this year, and nine candidates are cross-filed as both Republicans and Democrats and will appear May 16 on primary election ballots.
On Tuesday seven of the candidates participated in a forum that addressed everything from how they would promote educational quality and attract qualified teachers and administrators to how they would handle the budget pressures facing the district.
Adequate preparationWith educational quality and the pressures of a changing national and international economy troubling parents and students, how would the candidates work to make sure the district is adequately preparing students for life after high school?Most of the candidates said they were in favor of maintaining all of the district's current course and program offerings unless there was insufficient student interest in them.Andrew Adams, a Penn Township resident and doctor who has spent much of his professional career training medical students, said he believes the first step to maintaining educational quality is reaching a “fair and equitable” contract with teachers. Adams also said he would work to ensure the district did not cut any of its arts and music programs, and promote steering more students to trade schools where they could avoid college debt and fill much-needed job vacancies across the commonwealth.“It's a great opportunity to think about more creative ways to educate students and ways to create interest,” Adams said.For Chad Martin, an apprenticeship instructor at Simplex Grinnell, attracting the right teachers and administrators, investing in more STEM education is also a vital move for the district to make.“Every kid has a different set of needs and interests,” Martin said. “We owe it to them to be as inclusive as possible.”
Filling vacanciesSome parents in the district are concerned about how impending teacher retirements will impact existing programs, as well as a high turnover rate within the district's administrative offices.How candidates would address those concerns was another topic of debate Tuesday, with some candidates staking out starkly different positions on the issue of how the district can best attract and retain teachers and administrators.For Jill McDonald, a program supervisor at Pocono Community Services, the subject doesn't represent a problem at all. McDonald said she believes in the ability board's personnel committee to make the right decisions.“I don't think we're going to have trouble attracting good teachers and administrators to the district,” she said.Rebecca Freehling Boyd, who owns Freehling Lumber in Marwood, agreed. Boyd said she believes Saxonburg's charm leads to people wanting to stay, and with the benefits of long-term employment built into a teachers' contract, which rewards teachers with more years of service, educators have every professional reason to stay.
Administrator issuesFor administrators, short tenures at districts are a reality statewide, Boyd said. She pointed to a survey that found the average tenure of a school superintendent in Pennsylvania was three years.“I think if we have really good people in the administration, that's what's going to happen, and you have to accept that,” she said.Martin and Michael Archer, a civil engineer at TRC Engineers, said that adversarial relationships between teachers and administrators and low morale within the district were contributing to what they see as a real problem.“The morale is obviously not great when you have a contract out there for three years,” said Martin, referring to the district's ongoing teacher contract negotiations.Archer said he sees adversarial relationships within the district causing more widespread turmoil within the community at large.“There's adversarial relationships between the community in general,” Archer said. “That's the perception; perception is reality.”For the most part, candidates all said they wanted the district to work toward creating a more fulfilling and collaborative environment for teachers and administrators in the district.
Declining funding and budget concernsThe final subject of the night was how the candidates would address fiscal concerns within the district. While most candidates said they were not in favor of raising taxes, most also said they did not want to cut any of the district's current programs either.Shawn Moore, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who now works for Bell Atlantic/Verizon, said that can create a quandary for board members.“A budget is what it is. You can't have everything and do everything — unless you make that pot bigger,” Moore said. “And that's a tough sell to a lot of people. Including myself.”Adams said he believes the district needs to do more to press state officials to shift state funding toward public education and away from initiatives like public transit. He also thinks the district needs to be careful what it raises taxes to pay for, and said he would oppose tax increases to fund non-academic programs.“Do you raise taxes? It depends on what other options you have to improve the quality of education,” Adams said.George Zacherl, a Knoch high school graduate who is executive director of the business consulting firm BNI Western Pennsylvania, said district residents shouldn't expect this issue to go away, regardless of who is elected to the board.“It's an ongoing battle we're always going to fight,” Zacherl said of budget concerns.Still, Zacherl said he wants to the district to become more “proactive” in its planning and do a better job of communicating with the community about what the money is being used for, if a tax increase does become necessary.“If we have a proactive plan, and we're not just looking year to year ... maybe it's at least a little more tolerable.”
Other candidatesTwo candidates — Bob Goodlin and James Ellis — did not participate in Tuesday's forum.Organizers of the event said that Goodlin, who is the sole incumbent running for reelection, could not appear because of a prior commitment.Ellis reportedly did not respond to organizers attempts to contact him.
