BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer
RED BANK — After living in the borough for her entire life, Linda Clark has achieved a long-standing goal of serving on the Red Bank Board of Education.
She fills the seat vacated by Thomas Schroll, who resigned from the board effective last month.
Clark doesn’t have children of her own, but she does have nieces and nephews in the school system and has been involved in working with children for much of her life.
She works as a counselor and vocational facilitator for mentally disabled adults at the Monmouth Center for Vocational Training (MCVR), Eatontown, and has spent the past 10 years involved with the children of Red Bank.
For the past three years, Clark has been active in the Count the Children Movement, which she founded. She worked at the Red Bank Middle School as part of the Americorps program, where she worked in 1993 and 1999.
“I have been very involved with Red Bank children,” said Clark. “I have been very active in the [Red Bank} Education and Development Initiative.”
Clark has also worked to encourage children to take advantage of the programs offered at the Count Basie Learning Center.
“I think it’s important to get people motivated and involved,” said Clark, “especially with these new laws [which affect school budgets]. It’s a challenge.”
Clark said she will encourage parents to become more involved with the schools and with their children’s education.
As a member of the board, she said, she will work to come up with creative ways of getting parents and the rest of the community involved with the schools.
“I didn’t expect to have been given this chance so easily,” said Clark, who simply answered an advertisement by sending a letter expressing interest to the board office after Schroll announced his resignation. “But it is a good way to see if I want to run for election in April.”
Clark is currently studying for a master’s degree in education and is taking classes at Monmouth University, West Long Branch.