BOE Hears Six Candidates for Marshall Vacancy

Six of eight candidates for the Haddonfield Board of Education vacancy spoke to the board in the Middle School library Wednesday evening.

One candidate will be picked by the board to serve a term that is up for re-election in April 2012. The current vacancy was created by the July 2011 resignation of Marsha Marshall, for which she cited personal reasons.

The board will meet with every candidate who submitted an application; its slate of interviews will be completed when it hears Donyale Reavis and Maureen Eyles at its Sept. 15 meeting. The process is a stark contrast to board elections in April in which four incumbent members ran unopposed.

Board President Steven Weinstein led each candidate through a battery of questions about reasons for wanting to serve on the board, such as: unique abilities they had, managing the service commitment and whether the candidate had any issue-specific concerns.

Attorney David Adams said he views board membership as “part of a team.”

“We’ve all got an investment in this community,” Adams said. “We all live here and we’ve all got kids in the system.”

Adams, who moved to Haddonfield from Cherry Hill five years ago and has children in the eighth, 10th, and 11th grades, said he would lend “common sense and practicality” to the board.

“Those are skills learned the hard way,” he said. “We work a lot of hours so we know that hard work and preparation is how one gets things accomplished.”

As a board member, financial planner James McCormick would seek to “concentrate on revenue.” McCormick believes that his experience with Haddonfield municipal budget committees would enable him to help the district manage its finances.

“What I’ve learned is it’s not as easy as you think from the outside going in,” McCormick said of his experience with municipal committees.

“There are a tremendous number of constraints built into the system, and I know a lot of times it can be a very thankless job. There are difficult decisions and you’re not going to make everyone happy.”

California transplant, Andrew Berlin comes from a software engineering background, and believes that his experiences in that field would help address the burgeoning technological needs of the district.

“The face of the technology industry is changing what it means for high schools in the next 10 years,” Berlin said. “It’s quite a different world that the students are growing up in, with challenges in everything from teachers' contracts and health coverage to what you teach in health class.”

Berlin said he sees the role of the board members as navigating the challenges of the public education environment in Haddonfield.

“I would say it’s a combination of oversight and asking some tough questions followed by strong support,” he said.

“How do you take that set of challenges and package them into a set of really crisp messages that people understand? That’s definitely a thing I can help with,” Berlin said.

Business consultant Jerry Jellig brought a burst of energy into the room with him, pausing to shake each board member’s hand individually before opening his interview with a joke.

“At the beginning of every board meeting, a good board asks two questions—should we fire the superintendent, and, if not, how can we help him?” Jellig said.

Jellig, who serves as a nonvoting member of the Rancocas Valley school board, said that the board “has the responsibility to be good stewards of the public dollar,” which implies questions about the value each member adds to the governing body by serving.

“Measurement is the key in defining excellence, particularly in a place like Haddonfield,” Jellig said. “In spite of us, many of these kids are going to excel, with or without us. What’s the value added [by the board]?”

Attorney Jeff DeChristofaro, who operates an independent nonprofit and sits on the boards of several others, said that his experience with grant writing could be an asset to the district.

“As a product of Haddonfield, as someone who is very proud of having grown up here, I feel that it’s important to contribute to the education here,” DeChristofaro said. “I moved back to Haddonfield to be part of this community again.”

DeChristofaro said he was motivated to apply for the position by his daughter’s entry into elementary school.

“I see personal value in participating in a school system that my children are part of,” DeChristofaro said. “I want to ensure that the quality of education that I saw as a child, I want to see my daughter get that at Tatem.”

Single father Jeffrey Groon, who moved to town three years ago from Wildwood Crest, also has a daughter in the Haddonfield elementary school system. Groon said he views the time commitment demanded of a board member not as a “career goal, but more of a life goal.”

“I am definitely in this for the long haul,” Groon said to the board. “You’ll be seeing me. If that’s good or bad, it’s up to you. The earlier I get in there, the better for my daughter, the better for the community.”

Attorney Christopher Basner, who has four children ranging from infant to high-school ages, was on hand to offer an unrelated public comment at the meeting, but stayed to take in the appointment proceedings.

Basner, a native Iowan who had run for election to the board last year, was able to offer a unique perspective on the candidate interview process.

“To me, as an outsider, one thing that really unites the town is that everyone really values education and the schools, which is a neat thing,” Basner said.