UPPER FREEHOLD — Two candidates are seeking voter support to serve in the two full-term seats available for township residents on the Upper Freehold Regional Board of Education.
Incumbent Chris Shaw seeks another term and newcomer Patrick Nolan seeks to fill the seat that Joseph Stampe will vacate after the election. Stampe decided not to seek another term on the board.
Nolan has lived in Upper Freehold for eight years. He and his wife, Bernadette, have three daughters — Maggie, 9, Emily, 6, and Delaney, 4. Nolan works in asset management for the BlackRock firm. He formerly served on the Upper Freehold Economic Development Committee. His family is also involved in the Allentown Pop Warner organization.
Nolan wants to serve on the Board of Education to continue to build on the district’s momentum of the past five years, when the high school ranking went from 178 out of 565 to 84 out of 578, students have gone from being crammed into classrooms and trailers to having enough space to stretch their legs and minds, curriculum for all grades has been updated and more Advanced Placement courses have been offered.
Noting that the school district passed budgets six years in a row, including two referendums for a new school to support that effort, Nolan said, “The administration owns those results. The school board owns those results. But just as importantly, our residents own those results due to their willingness to provide the funding required to achieve all that we have achieved.”
Nolan said he fears that the district runs the risk of sliding backward if budgets fail too often, and he wants to play a role in securing the community’s comfort with the school district’s spending and a renewed sense of purpose in providing for the kids.
“We will continue to need pragmatic members of our community to maintain this effort on our board, members that seek to include opinions not isolate them, members who are willing to make difficult decisions based on sound principles and common sense, and who are not afraid to stand behind those decisions with transparency in front of our community,” Nolan said. “Most of all, we will continue to need members that will maintain a maniacal focus on the most important constituents in any school board debate — our children. I believe I hold these qualities.”
Nolan believes that the district’s best days still lie in front of it, and he wants to keep it that way.
“While I believe most decisions have been made with fiscal discipline, I do believe there’s more tightening that can be illustrated,” Nolan said.
He thinks that the communication between board and community could be better.
“Saying ‘it’s on the website’ and ‘people don’t come to meetings’ is simply not good enough,” Nolan said. “I believe the administration and board have a PR problem as much as they have a budget problem. We need to push information out to our community more regularly.”
Nolan said the budget discussion is a perfect example of the district’s public relations problem.
“The community talks about it during March and April, then goes silent for the other 10 months,” Nolan said. “The financing of our budget has issues that come up throughout the year. We should communicate it better. For example, when the employee health care costs are calculated in January, we should communicate to the community what we had originally budgeted for and what the actual figure was, and what decisions were made with the difference.”
Last year, a savings in health care costs above the budgeted amount allowed the district to retain teachers that would have otherwise been laid off, according to Nolan.
“That point wasn’t communicated very well and it was a positive point to make,” he said. “Using the press is nice, but there should be a way for the district to communicate its own message. Use the automated phone line, build a master email list for the community. I’m sure there are other inexpensive ways to push more information out to the taxpayers in our community than is currently being utilized. Transparency is key. ”
With regard to the proposed budget, Nolan said he does not want to see budget cuts move into the areas that have led district rankings to increase.
“Advanced Placement courses and advanced teaching methods need to be kept as sacred as possible,” he said. “They did a nice job getting the budget to the required 2 percent cap without cutting a lot of teachers. I don’t like losing the bus drivers; wish there were other places to look for the funding.”
His biggest concern is preparing for next year’s budget, and all the one-time fixes utilized to get this year’s budget in-line.
“Between selling property and busses, fixing the fund balance back to a more reasonable level, loss of state aid for theARRA [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] program, and another possible loss in tuition revenue from Millstone, it already appears that we could be looking at an $800,000 hole to fill for next year, and we haven’t even voted on this year’s budget yet,” Nolan said. “I’m anxious to get the budget on a path of sustainability, which eliminates the need for these one-time items.”
Nolan said it is hard to discuss fiscal responsibility when the biggest portion of the budget— teachers’ salaries and benefits — is arranged in three-year increments. During the upcoming teacher contract negotiations, Nolan would like to see variability in teacher compensation and benefits.
“The budget goes haywire when the teachers are held responsible for a fixed cost and the district needs to pick up the variable costs, which are rising faster and faster,” Nolan said. “The governor’s proposal to pay health care is a start, but I’m interested in making sure that our budget is protected against aggressive inflation that we currently seem to have no answers for.”
Nolan would prefer student fees didn’t exist.
“They are a byproduct, however, of budgeting that hasn’t worked so well in the last few years, due to state cuts,” he said.
Overall, Nolan believes students receive a quality education in the Upper Freehold Regional School District.
“Absolutely, it’s hard to argue with the results posted by the district over the last five years,” he said. “Could we get better? Absolutely, and we should strive for that, but what we must rage against the possibility of sliding backwards.”
Nolan said as a board member he would try to ensure that students have the best experience that they can in the school district.
“First, they must feel safe,” he said. “I’m proud to say that my wife was on the initial anti-bullying committee for the middle school, and I’m proud of the efforts of that committee, and agree with the state mandate that it should be in all places in our schools not just grades 5-8.”
He also believes students should be taught by exceptional teachers, who have energy and passion and are rigorously held accountable for their teaching methods.
“Our district already has many wonderful teachers who could serve as role models for this goal,” Nolan said.
“Third, we should continue to prepare them for a world that is so much more open to them than a few decades ago. Teaching should continue to strive to encourage kids to think globally. They shouldn’t just be students of the Upper Freehold School District, they should be students of the world.”
Shaw could not be reached for comment. He has lived in the township for 11 years. He and his wife, Susanne, have three children. He has worked for several technology companies and as vice president of product sales at J.P. Morgan Chase. He also serves as CEO of his family’s property management company.
An active member of the Upper Freehold Regional Elementary/Middle School PTA, Shaw has been a member of the Board of Education for six years. He first ran for the board in 2005 when the district was searching for a superintendent, trying to improve communication between the community and the school district, developing staff and curriculum, and improving fiscal responsibility and long-term district planning. In 2008, when he won a second term on the board, he said that the board worked hard to successfully tackle those issues and that he remains committed to doing any more work that needs to be done and seeing that work through to completion.