THE RAGING DEBATE OVER SHARED services among state lawmakers has left Jan Furman, superintendent of Northern Valley Regional High School District, bemused.

“It’s funny to hear everybody talk about it. And we just say, ‘Why don’t they come look?’ We are one of the districts that already do it, but there are others,” she said. “When you listen to everything that’s coming out of Trenton, it’s as if nobody is doing it.”

Northern Valley Regional is made up of two high schools with 2,400 students, who hail from seven towns and two other school districts in Bergen County. The towns pay tuition to send their students to its schools, generating $250,000 in annual revenue for the district.

Northern Valley runs an autistic program for children up to eighth grade that is used by 26 districts in Bergen County. The district also operates a local educational agency that employs teachers and manages the business functions, such as leasing for two preschool handicapped programs, for nine towns. These are just some examples of how shared services have been part of Northern Valley Regional’s culture for the past several decades.

The district is not alone.

Sharing a Superintendent Mine Hill and Wharton became the first school districts in Morris County to share a superintendent through a joint, or interlocal, service agreement, which took effect in October 2006. Superintendent Rick Bitondo spends two days in Mine Hill and three days in Wharton each week, and has an office in each district.

“One of the benefits that we’re seeing is that one superintendent responsible for two districts can see the practices of both districts and determine which work best. Basically, it comes down to sharing best practices, as well as sharing ser-vices,” said Paul Breda, Mine Hill school board president.

While nearly 25 other districts in the state share a superintendent, Mine Hill has always had its own, who doubled as a principal, and also had an assistant principal. But after much deliberation, the school board decided to restructure. In the end, Mine Hill eliminated its assistant principal position, hired a full-time principal, and agreed to pay 40 percent of the compensation for its new joint superintendent. Through the arrangement, Mine Hill is saving $60,000 annually. Out of its $7.8 million annual budget, that amounts to about 1 tax point, Breda said.

The Mine Hill board couldn’t be more pleased with the way the new administrative structure is working, he added.

“This is a big step for us. Our district has always had a principal/superintendent in one person, and I don’t think that led to the kind of efficient management that we would like it to. That’s a lot to ask of one person.”

Mine Hill struck its first interlocal agreement with Wharton in March 2006 for a special education program. Wharton had a pre-kindergarten handicapped program and its lease was up; Mine Hill had room in one of its buildings that it ended up renting to Wharton for $3,000 a month.

“That’s a real benefit for these kids because now they have more exposure to regular education programs, and they can participate in some of them,” Breda said. Out of that effort, both districts decided to expand their agreement to share a special services supervisor, a five-person special education team, and a caller for substitute teachers. Getting there, though, took time.

Both school boards have committees that continue to meet regularly to review ideas for consolidating and sharing services. Public hearings also were held before each board approved the agreements.

“Our board had done a lot of soul searching about our future and about our administrative structure, and we wanted to achieve some of the critical mass, some of the economies of scale, that a larger district would have,” said Breda.

Mine Hill is a pre-kindergarten through sixth grade district with one school that houses 360 students. Wharton is a pre-kindergarten through eighth grade school district, with 800 students housed in three buildings on one campus—with the exception of rented space for its pre-kindergarten program.

Challenging the Status Quo “The message is we’re going to challenge the status quo at every opportunity, and this is a big first step. I think this will continue to pay dividends in the future,” Breda said.
“I don’t know what any district is going to do to share services that is going to be some home run for the taxpayers. I’m not convinced that that will happen anywhere,” Breda added.

Instead, Mine Hill is considering: What do we really need, and what will give us the best return? What’s going to give us the best bang for our buck?
Todd Fay, superintendent of West Amwell Township in Hunterdon County, said his district also participates in shared service arrangements.

West Amwell shares transportation and a child study team with South Hunterdon High School, located in the same town. The district hosts professional development days, topics, speakers and programs for its teachers and those from Lambertville and Stockton, which also send their students to South Hunterdon’s middle school and/or its high school. West Amwell also offers a joint inservice day with East Amwell and Frenchtown.

Participating in the Hunterdon County Educational Services Commission, West Amwell saves a lot of money through its bulk purchasing program for school supplies, such as paper. Some of the districts also are talking about sharing a business administrator or possibly a superintendent, if a position were to open in the future. West Amwell also operates a preschool class for children with disabilities, located in a Lambertville public school.

“We operate the class in their school rent-free, and they send their students to our program tuition-free,” he said.

“We’re bursting at the seams; their enrollment has declined a bit, so they have some available space.”

The West Amwell superintendent and board president meet monthly with their counterparts in neighboring districts to come up with more ways to share services and save money.

Is Smaller Smarter? Smaller districts offer better instructional curriculum and are more personal, said Superintendent Fay.

“Nobody seems to be talking about (whether) small schools actually have some merit. So, it kind of gets discourag-ing for us in small schools. It feels like we’re getting beat up all the time,” said Fay of West Amwell.

Fay said that his community would not want to be involved in a larger district. It is disturbing, he added, to many in the education community that all this talk about property tax reform under the gold dome in Trenton has given school dis-tricts—small ones in particular, a black eye.

“I understand people wanting to lower property taxes and save money, but it doesn’t even seem like it’s ever figured in that small schools might actually be better,” he said.

Fay, who lives in Bucks County, Pa., just over the Delaware River in Hunterdon County, said his children attend the Central Bucks School District, which has 19,000 students. While his students are getting an excellent education and the district has impressive facilities, he said he does not think that it is possible to have the kind of individualized attention that his district gives its students.

“I don’t think that the (Bucks County) children are anywhere near as important there. My kids really never felt that important to anybody. In a small school, I know every child’s name, brother’s and sister’s names, parent’s names,” Fay said. “That makes a big dif-ference when you’re trying to work with the children and work with the families.”

However, there are others who disagree with his assessment.

Madeline Gavin, interim superintendent in Lambertville, who has worked as an interim superintendent in other districts from Atlan-tic to Mercer counties, said she thinks shared services are a good idea, and there are savings to be had on both ends in sharing a facil-ity and a child study team, especially for small districts. Lambertville is a one school, kindergarten through grade six district, with 155 students, where Gavin—like Fay—acts as superintendent and principal.

But, Gavin questioned, what is too small?

“Small districts are good, but I have not seen such small districts as when I came to Hunterdon County because I came up from Mercer County,” she said. “I was used to K-12s, and when I came up here and I see all these little districts, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“Schools that are small, yes, are good and there is a lot of merit to them. However, when it gets too small, I think the effects are diminished,” she said.
Sensing the Squeeze Paul Breda, board president of the Mine Hill Township Board of Education in Morris County, said his district is acutely aware of all the talk.

“We’re feeling the pressure or the exposure; we’re feeling vulnerable to the talk of consolidation and justifying a school at this point in time. I guess that’s a relevant factor into how things have transpired,” Breda said.

Furman, who previously worked as a superintendent in a district in upstate New York and another on Long Island, N.Y., said that it does not seem that the state Department of Education is fully exploring all avenues and is pushing for K-12 districts.

The Northern Valley model, Furman said, is not well known in New Jersey because frequently there are assumptions that a high school regional district only provides services for high school children.

“It doesn’t sound like the (state education) commissioner is interested in (shared services) becoming a trend. I’ve heard her re-peatedly say that they’re only interested in K-12 models, so that’s a concern that we have,” Furman said.

If she could make Northern Valley’s successful experience well known throughout the Garden State, Furman said she thinks it would make a difference. But, there has to be open-mindedness to the concept first.

Taking a Closer Look “My message would be that there are other efficient, effective models for sharing services and providing high quality educational service to children and their parents in New Jersey, and they’re not all K-12 models,” she added. “Some of these other models really warrant a closer look before we assume that they’re not effective or efficient and should be changed.”

Northern Valley has cooperative deals with seven elementary districts for transportation. Other examples of shared services in the regional district include a curriculum center made up of a director, secretary, two professional staff developers and two instruc-tional technology trainers, who have been housed in its board office for over two decades. All the salaries are paid for by the seven towns that send their children to the high school district (Demarest, Closter, Haworth, Old Tappan, Harrington Park, North Vale and Northwood).
The Northern Valley Regional district also offers collaborative curriculum development and staff development for the seven towns and the neighboring and independent school districts of Cresskill and Alpine, which can send their teachers and staff to Northern Valley training for a fee. Superintendents from the nine boards meet twice monthly and the supers from the seven towns meet once a month.

“The curriculum alignment and staff development here is tighter than either of the two K-12s I was in, with no disrespect to them,” Furman said of her previous school districts in New York.

Five years ago, Northern Valley conducted a survey and asked parents what they valued most in the seven towns.

Their answer: “Collaboration. That allows their children to go to small, community-based elementary and middle schools and to have the benefits of a large comprehensive high school,” Furman said.

Pursuing shared services for Mine Hill has become a mission for survival.
The board decided that it wanted to control its own destiny and take proactive measures rather than wait and have the poten-tial of any requirements imposed on it by the state, Breda said. He added that he hopes that a balance could be struck between raising expectations across New Jersey that districts will do everything in their power to share services, and state and local initiatives, that boards can actively seek.

Breda cautioned: “If boards don’t start actively looking for these opportunities and are complacent, then I think they should be ex-pecting that they’re going to be forced into it.... eventually.

“The best possible outcome is that there is encouragement and incentive from the state, and initiatives and creativity at the local level.”

Rosa Cirianni is a writer for the New Jersey School Boards Association. She can be reached at (609) 278-5247 or rcirianni@njsba.org.

By Richard J. DiLascio and Lloyd A. Rosenberg

IN THESE TIMES OF RISING TAXES and budget cuts, shared services can save taxpayers money while still providing the resources necessary to maintain a successful community. Shared services is not a completely new concept, but inter-municipality cooperation has long been hindered by New Jersey’s traditional “home rule” governmental approach, which has prevented both regional shared service projects, as well as intra-municipality shared service projects. Long relegated to the sharing of services such as landscaping and snow removal, municipalities such as Lyndhurst and their boards of education are beginning to realize the huge advantages of out-of-the-box thinking.

We’ve expanded shared services to include the sharing of facilities and land. By sharing facilities, Lyndhurst has been able to expand facilities, while at the same time avoiding exorbitant expenses. The cost savings alone on a shared building make the prospect of constructing two separate facilities wasteful.

Shared service facility projects can be any semi-compatible services provided to the residents of the community. Ex-amples include community centers, day care facilities, libraries, senior housing, office space and athletic facilities and fields. A large portion of a municipal budget is allocated to the school budget, so by the very nature of fiscal cooperation, shared service facilities are inherently beneficial. However, in the past such an intra-municipal approach to facilities has failed because of a lack of communication and a solid, working relationship between the board of education, departments and the municipality itself.

Traditionally, school districts face a number of challenges in creating or expanding facilities including community ap-proval, lengthy construction time and the cost of bonding a project. Through a shared services approach, school business administrators can shift debt from the school budget to a municipal budget. In turn, this type of cooperation provides munici-palities with greater access to grants, including the “Safe Street to School” grants provided by the Department of Transportation, “Green Acres” grants and community development grants. This additional funding, which otherwise would not be avail-able to a board of education, can be used to offset costs. In addition, school boards eliminate the need for a referendum, minimize financing fees, expedite the financing and approvals processes and gain access to additional building sites not otherwise available.

Most recently in Lyndhurst, the township’s leadership teamed up with DMR Architects in a shared services initiative that will result in a building that will house both the municipal-sponsored Lyndhurst Youth Community Center and the Board of Education’s offices. We both benefited—creating a compromise that did not require any losses on either side.

Our board of education is receiving a centrally located administrative office directly on the campus of Lyndhurst High School, and the township is developing a new youth center on land it did not have to purchase. The Township of Lyndhurst used Bergen County Improvement Authority money to fund the project—a source of funding unavailable to the school district alone. This resulted in a streamlined financing and approval process and shorter turnaround time. Finally, it provided our taxpayers over $100,000 in yearly savings in rent for the board of education. In addition, the township’s share of the project costs were reduced $850,000 due to a partnership with a developer. Given the success of this initiative, we are exploring even more shared services opportunities in Lyndhurst, including a proposed community pool and proposed new pre-K and day care facility.

Opportunities like these exist wherever forward-thinking individuals come to the table to seek out a mutually benefi-cial solution. With the huge benefits that can be realized in shared services, more municipalities should adopt this ap-proach. It just made sense for Lyndhurst and can make sense for additional municipalities as well as for tax-paying resi-dents throughout New Jersey.

Richard J. DiLascio is mayor of the Township of Lyndhurst. Lloyd A. Rosenberg, AIA, is the president and CEO of DMR Architects.
Reprinted with permission from the November 2006 issue of New Jersey Municipalities.

By Louis R. Centolanza

THE INFLUENCE THAT TESTING holds over teachers and students can be detrimental.

Consider what education, human behavior and parenting author Alfie Kohn says about standardized testing: “The intellectual life is being squeezed out of our schools as they are transformed into what are essentially giant test-prep centers.”

Kohn, whom Time magazine has described as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores,” wrote about testing in a 2002 report in Phi Delta Kappan, a professional journal for educa-tors. “

“The situation is most egregious, and the damage most pronounced, where high stakes are attached to the test—for example, where money is dangled in front of teachers, principals and schools if they manage to raise the scores; or where students are actually forced to repeat a grade or denied a diploma on the basis of their performance on a single test.”

Research shows that teaching to the test is not a sound practice because of the effect it has on the quality of student learning and instruction. Curriculum and instruction are key responsibilities of school leaders and faculty. And only through a full understanding and acceptance of proven curriculum strategies will educators have an impact on the quality of in-structional methods.

We cannot accept teaching as skill, drill, or teach-and-test activities. Rather, we should view teaching as a thought-provoking and a student-engaged process. We must remember that teaching does not equal learning until students un-derstand the material and can apply it. And this cannot be measured by high stakes testing alone.

What’s the Significance of Test Scores? An increase in test scores may be meaningless, if important learning experiences had to be sacrificed in the process of getting there. Kohn said that he believes schools across America are under intense pressure to demonstrate better test results, which has resulted in the “cannibalization of curriculum.” Important parts of schooling have been pared or cut so that educators can spend time preparing for the test and its results.

As educators, we believe the quality and scope of instruction that we give students is one of the most important services we can give to society. A teacher must be qualified, well-educated and dedicated in order to meet this challenge.

Educators should strive for teaching that results in full understanding. School instruction should allow students to become enlightened so when they become adults, they can be capable of solving problems, be socially responsible and enjoy healthy lives.

A rich curriculum requires educators to expand beyond the textbook—they should experiment, participate in projects and activities, frequent libraries, and use technology to expand the learning environment and stimulate the interests of students. The textbook is no substitute for hands-on, field-based learning. We should not accept teaching as a skill or a drill, teaching-test activity; rather we should view it as a thought-provoking and student-engaged process.

Testing Burdens Curriculum As an associate professor of Education Leadership, a graduate class that I taught at Montclair State University, I conducted a study for the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 school years in which New Jersey educators re-ported that statewide testing had a significant impact on their teaching and on student learning.

Urban educators in particular emphasized the negative effect that testing had on their teaching. In urban areas, teachers said they were inundated with teaching directives from the state department of education, their school’s central office and principals, which influenced what and how they taught. They reported that textbooks were adopted based upon adherence to state directives and test content. Most importantly, teachers said they were concerned about their ability to teach creatively because of the “stifling” effect testing had upon the curriculum.

Surveys were distributed to 850 teachers in northern New Jersey. One-hundred forty graduate students and field study enrollees at Montclair State University, Paterson teachers, and administrators throughout northern New Jersey dis-tributed the surveys. Of the 850 surveys given out, 376 responses—or 44 percent—were returned.

Teachers in urban elementary and secondary schools offered candid responses as part of the survey. Here’s what some of them had to say about the impact that statewide testing has had on their teaching:

“Teaching has become a means to the test rather than learning.”

“We gear all of our staff development to test specifications.”

“It controls what I teach. I teach to the test the majority of the school year.”

“We are forced to teach to the test, often neglecting individual needs.”

“Cripples real learning because students are taught to pass the test.”

“The test has slowly killed my creativity.”

“Our system revolves around the test.”

“We have little say in how we teach.”

“It drags us all down.”

Teachers in suburban elementary and secondary schools offered the following responses: “It drives the curriculum.”

“You have to plan the entire curriculum around what the student needs to know on the test.”

“It impedes the depth of instruction that is available to students.”

“I am confident that if I follow the district curriculum students will do fine on the state test.”

“[It] takes flexibility and creativity out of teaching.”

“It requires me to bore myself and my students with practice problems to prepare for standardized testing.”

Testing Pitfalls It is difficult to enrich curriculum to boost student interest when test specifications dictate what is taught in a classroom and what students should be learning.

“As long as schools treat test scores as the major proxies for student achievement and educational quality, we will have a hard time refocusing our attention on what really matters in education,” according to an E. W. Eisner story that appeared in Educational Leadership magazine. “The primary aim of education is not to enable students to do well in school, but to help them do well in the lives they lead outside of school.”

The problem with advancing a one-size-fits-all curriculum for every student is that it overlooks diversity in schooling and richness in learning. Experience shows that the best way to advance learning for students is to deal with problems that have more than one correct answer. Doing so helps students exercise judgment by reaching conclusions through deliberation that could result in multiple re-sponses.

“When teachers teach to the test, they are looking for only one answer, the correct answer,” according to Eisner.

Louis R. Centolanza is an independent educational consultant in Bedminster, who works with districts throughout the state. Centolanza retired in 2001 as the superintendent for Passaic Valley Regional School District in Little Falls. He also retired as a professor for Montclair State University in 2006. He can be reached at (908) 901-9188 or centolanza@optonline.net.

By Nora Carr

ONCE CONSIDERED THE SOLE purview of global corporations and consumer product giants like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Toyota, and Disney, branding is coming of age in financial services, healthcare, non-profit organizations, govern-ment, professional services and even (gasp) education.

While talk of market share, media budgets, brand strategy, positioning and other common marketing terms still give many school board members and superintendents the willies, the fact is that public education can learn a lot from successful brands.

Widely viewed today by many taxpayers, business leaders, and elected officials as inefficient, ineffective and bureaucratic, public education is losing its once-noble brand position as the cornerstone of American democracy.

“The first problem is the name; it’s called public education,” said marketing guru Laura Ries, who has coauthored four books on branding. “The perception out there is that anything run by the government is lousy. That may not be the way it is, but anything that is government-run is seen as big, inefficient, many times ineffective, and not as well run as the private sector.”

Positioning Is Key More than just a logo, theme, or color scheme, great brands own a unique attribute or position in the mind of consumers.

It’s easy to test this proposition. Name a favorite brand and see what pops instantly to mind. Now say “public educa-tion,” “ABC Senior High School,” or “XYZ School District” and see what happens. What words and images come instantly to mind? Contrast those results with the names of the most prestigious private schools in your area, and you begin to see why brands matter.

Taking a cue from private schools and well-endowed universities, public schools and districts may want to consider name changes that convey a special focus or emphasis on academic excellence, Ries says. Generic school names like North, South, East and West do little to spark the imagination or position the school as an academic leader in the minds of prospective students and their families.

“Names are very important in branding, and so often the names for public schools are chosen haphazardly or with-out much thought at all,” said Ries, author of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding. “Many of the fancy names used by private schools are infinitely more powerful, and give people an ability to talk about them in a way that sounds much better.”

Charter schools, despite mixed results in terms of academic achievement, appeal to parents and business leaders because they tend to have a unique focus and are viewed as free of the bureaucratic taint associated with traditional pub-lic schools, according to Ries.

“People always feel a specialist is better than a generalist,” said Ries. “Public schools need to find ways to focus on one thing, on one word they can own in the mind of the consumer that no one else can own.”

Uniting Behind Powerful Leaders One way public schools can build a better brand is to rally behind an outspoken leader who personifies the brand and unites the community around the importance of public schools.

“When Bill Gates talks about the future of the tech industry, people listen because Microsoft is such a big global brand,” said Ries, noting that few outside of education know who Margaret Spellings is—or care, given the political nature of the position. “Who speaks for public education? One of the problems is that there’s no one leader for this industry.”

While board members and superintendents may not be able to solve the lack of visible leadership at the national level, they can—and should—spend more time on public school advocacy.

“Many times school administrators spend most of their time getting the organization running smoothly instead of working on the public perception of their school district,” said Ries. “While that is certainly understandable, having a highly visible spokesperson promoting public education is very important on multiple levels. A powerful, well-known leader can make a brand believable and keep everyone on course.”

Restoring credibility, rebuilding trust, and reclaiming public education’s brand position requires public relations, not advertising, Ries said.

“Most people, when they hear any words like branding or marketing, only think of advertising,” said Ries. “We don’t recommend advertising for a brand that’s trying to establish itself unless you have a credible message. What you really want to drive is PR.”

Giving speeches, publishing opinion pieces, connecting with community groups, and developing close, working rela-tionships with reporters can help make school leaders—and the brand they represent—respected household names. Pub-lic relations, whether by word-of-mouth or in print, provides critical third-party endorsements that help build credibility.

“First you have to do something, then you have to verbalize it, and then you need to do PR to get people to talk about it,” Ries said. “The difficult thing is not the idea but the verbalization of the idea, and then sticking to that turn of phrase that articulates the message and keeps it relevant.”

Needed: Emotion and Consistency More than a decade into the standards and accountability movement, where data drives decisions and public policy, it’s ironic that facts often don’t matter when it comes to public perception.

Take Volvo, for example. Volvo still owns safety in the minds of most consumers, even though a Volvo model didn’t make the top 10 in a recent automotive industry study that ranked the world’s safest cars.

For weak brands, like public education, the opposite is true. Research studies consistently show that public educa-tion is doing a better job with more students than ever before—so why do so many think public education is failing in this country?

Factoids and statistics don’t change minds. Research shows consumers seek out information that reinforces an existing position, and filter out data that contradicts firmly held beliefs.

“Using one verbalization, and sticking to it, is better than trying to get it perfect,” says Ries. “If the numbers don’t match the perception, they’re not going to do you any good.”

To counteract this, educators need to focus on positioning more than facts, telling stories and using emotion to drive home key concepts and ideas. Testimonials from successful graduates, satisfied parents and highly credible community leaders will resonate more with information-weary consumers than charts, pie graphs and 45 slides of mind-numbing data.

Brands are powerful because they represent a promise to the consumer in terms of consistency and quality. How many times have you gone to a McDonald’s while traveling because “you know what you’re going to get?”

When it comes to your schools or district, do parents know what they’re going to get? Are you delivering the same high-quality education to each and every child?

The lack of consistency is part of what’s driving the “my school’s OK, public education isn’t” phenomenon, according to Ries.

“The result of a weak brand is that consumers’ personal reactions may be different, but they can’t verify that their experiences are shared by others,” said Ries.

Defining your school or district’s brand promise—the one thing your students, parents, teachers, and other key groups can count on time and time again, and want to be a part of—is just the first step. According to Interbrand, a global brand marketing firm, the world’s most successful brands are characterized by consumer recognition, consistency, emo-tion, and uniqueness.

That’s why educators should stick to one theme or message consistently over a long period of time, rather than cre-ating new tag lines, logos, and color schemes every year.

Collateral materials, websites, PowerPoint presentations, voice mail messages, e-mail signatures, fax cover sheets, automobile stickers, e-mail newsletters and speeches all represent moments of truth for your brand image and message. When colors, fonts, formats and other design elements change every time a new piece is produced, your brand power diminishes.

It’s hard enough for public schools to cut through the clutter created by today’s advertisers without adding to the confusion through inconsistency and poor definition. Changing perception—the heart and soul of branding— represents a long-term investment.

“You’re not going to be able to combat the perception that our schools are failing, or that private schools are better, by running an ad campaign,” said Ries. “You’re going to have to get out there and promote the idea that public education is better than we think.”

The bottom line is this: Public education won’t survive without public support. It’s time for public education to reclaim its brand position as the world’s great equalizer, the place where the American dream takes root.

Nora Carr (ncarr@carolina.rr.com) is chief communications officer for North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and a contributing editor to the American School Board Journal.
Reprinted with permission from American School Board Journal/October 2006, 53 © 2006 National School Boards Association. All rights reserved.

By Rosa Cirianni

WHETHER SHE IS SERVING ON HER LOCAL school board for the past 17 years, or in her 44th year as the longest standing Republican committeewoman in Passaic County, or if she’s speaking as a former educator with 36 years of ex-perience, Marie Hakim has longevity and dedication on her side.

The two constants that keep her going are her love for education and her commitment to her native hometown of Clifton, a diverse city of about 79,000 people just 10 miles outside of New York City.

The New Jersey School Boards Association named Hakim as its 2006 School Board Member of the Year. She is the second person to hold the prestigious title, out of 4,800 elected school board members in the Garden State since the rec-ognition program’s inception last year.

Hakim, who spent decades as a health and physical education teacher at Paramus High School in Bergen County, has spent much of her life being a champion of students and fighting for reforms in education on behalf of her school dis-trict and others throughout New Jersey.

From her days as a coach for high school gymnastics and tennis, to acting as the statewide chairwoman for cheer-leading under the now-defunct state Division of Girls and Women’s Sports, she has worked for the public good. Most re-cently, she testified before the state joint legislative committee on pensions and benefits, which is charged with recom-mending ways to reform New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes.

Pressing for Changes On behalf of NJSBA, Hakim urged the committee to give school districts more flexibility to negotiate healthcare costs. She advocated changes in the state health benefits program that would provide for deductibles and co-payments, employee contributions to premiums, and place new employees in managed-care systems.

“I’ve always liked to be involved. I like to keep busy. And I am particularly concerned with things that center around education,” she said.

The retired educator now spends much of her time on school board business in Clifton, as president of the Passaic County School Boards Association, and as an adjunct professor overseeing student teachers through William Paterson University in Wayne.

She’s a graduate of NJSBA’s Master Board Member Academy and founder of the Clifton Education Foundation, which awards grants to students and staff members for creative programs and special projects that the district budget doesn’t cover.

Hakim was president of Clifton’s school board for four years, and served as vice president for two. She’s also a certi-fied hypnotherapist and occasionally offers her services to friends. She has made tape recordings, held stress manage-ment courses for her district and Clifton’s recreation department and she has even entertained on the Jersey shore circuit.

“There is hypnotism that is very serious and there’s hypnotism for entertainment, but it is authentic and some people are more susceptible than others,” she said.

Asked if she would like to use her hypnotic skills at a school board meeting, she said: “Oh yes, all the time…That would be lovely.”

School Leader magazine recently interviewed Hakim to find out what makes her tick, what motivates her to keep serving year after year, and what frustrates her as a local school board member. In her new role, as NJSBA’s Board Member of the Year, we asked Hakim what challenges she sees for members and what she wishes she knew starting out.

Q. Why did you get involved in serving Clifton Schools?
A. I’m a school teacher. I’ve been committed to education. I taught for 36 years. I was a teacher while I became a board member in 1990. I retired from teaching in 1996. And education has been my life and my concern and my focus, and I wanted to be involved with my community, particularly with the school system.

What’s been your biggest accomplishment on the board?
There’ve been so many. It’s hard to elaborate. One of the accomplishments was in 1998. I formed a joint board-city coun-cil committee so the boards could work together.

I’ve given numerous testimonies before the Department of Education and legislators and some of them have been successful.

In 2002, when I was president of the board of education, I went before the (state) Assembly Education Committee in support of full implementation of amendments to an Assembly bill. In the end, Clifton was one of five districts that qualified for more than $3.4 million in additional state aid. I’d like to think that my testimony contributed to it because there are new laws that went into effect in July 2005 with some of the same specifications as we recommended.

How have you seen education change in the past 17 years that you’ve served on the board?
The increase in special education students and the much greater diversity in districts. In my district, there are over 67 languages spoken in the homes of our students, so we’re an extremely diverse district.

I’ve seen the growth in advancement placement courses…I think they’re good. I think diversity is a good thing. I think diversity makes us be appreciative of others and understanding of others’ cultures.

What inspires you to keep going?
In education, your work is never done. And in addition to that, more often than not, I’ve been on the minority side and had a number of changes and initiatives that I wanted to see incorporated to improve our school system.

Do you have any frustrations as a board member?
All the time. Making people understand that we are not making up statistics on enrollment, statistics on our financial needs, and statistics on our building needs.

My biggest frustration is making the public understand that you have to spend money for good education and nothing stays the same. Prices increase and the longer we delay on building projects, the more expensive they become.

In Clifton, more often than not, we have not passed referendums, our budgets have always been defeated. And in the past the city council has taken large, large chunks out of our defeated budgets. And of course, certain legisla-tion has not helped like S-1701 (state budget cap law) and the growth of our district. We have two middle schools and we’re in desperate need of a third middle school.

We have the second largest high school [in square feet] in the state, we have over 3,400 [students] in the high school, and it’s anticipated that next year we’ll be over 3,600.

We have 14 elementary schools and one elementary school annex. We’re proposing a December referendum to al-leviate the problem in the high school and the middle school by moving the ninth graders out of the high school and the eighth graders out of the middle school. We’re actually creating a third middle school that would be grades six through nine.

How do you feel about being named NJSBA’s Board Member of the Year?
I’m overwhelmed, and I’m most appreciative, and I’m particularly touched and gratified to be named board member of the year.

Is there anything you would like members to know about you?
I’m a retired educator. I’m presently an adjunct professor at William Paterson University. I will be happy to serve the school boards in any capacity, and if this recognition helps me to promote the New Jersey School Boards Association, I most certainly would be happy to do that.

What challenges do you see ahead for districts?
Funding, special education and No Child Left Behind.

NCLB still needs to be greatly modified, particularly when one child can cause a group to fail in three groups. If the child is learning disabled, if they don’t speak English, and if they’re a special education student, they can cause you to fail in three categories. I also think it’s unrealistic to test everyone—particularly special ed students because they have special needs. To test them the same as everyone else is unfair.

New Jersey receives the least amount of federal funding and it seems that our legislators and even our local munici-palities like to blame the high property taxes on schools. Well, we do know that a lot of the property tax is because of the burden of school taxes, but we don’t receive the things from the state that we should receive. We don’t receive full funding for mandates.

Special education is growing, and I have a large problem with the tuition costs for out of district placement. Some of the special education districts charge two, three and four times the amount that local districts charge for tuition or per pupil spending.

Why the discrepancy?
They say they need this to maintain their costs. But I say it’s because the superintendent of a special education school (that receives special education students from other schools), no matter how small it is, has to be paid equal to the highest paid county superintendent…that’s legislation.

I don’t think it should be more than 1-1/2 times the per pupil spending. For example, if we spend $10,000 on a pupil, I don’t think the sending district should receive more than $15,000.

Does your district have many special education students?
We have many special education students. Many are educated in the district, but we also have a number of students who we have to send out of district and these costs are outrageous. The tuition costs are in addition to the fact that you often need a one-to-one aide with a special educated child, as well as transportation.

What can board members do to solve some of these issues?
Board members can continue to speak out and explain to their communities the need to be active and proactive. The funding formula for New Jersey definitely has to change.

Any ideas on what it should be?
More money and fewer restrictions and mandates that cost us so much money. For example, No Child Left Behind costs us a lot of money.

Where is your school district under NCLB?
We have three schools that made 39 out of 40 and the rest of them passed.

What advice do you have for new board members starting out?
Get involved in the New Jersey School Boards Association programs. Never stop learning. It’ll make you a better board member.

Anything you wish you knew when you started out?
I wish every new board member would attend the (NJSBA) weekend orientation session because the information provided there cannot be replaced. But, it shouldn’t stop with just the orientation weekend.

Board members across the state have to take advantage of all the programs and seminars that are offered to keep their skills current, as well as to stay involved.

I find a lot of board members are unaware of legislation that affects their districts until after the legislation has passed. If they became more involved in their local and their county and of course, their state (school boards) associa-tions, they would be aware of these proposals and can help campaign and help affect legislation that is more positive to us.

What do you want people to know about you other than being a board member?
I’m an educator first and always.

Rosa Cirianni is a writer for the New Jersey School Boards Association. She can be reached at rcirianni@njsba.org.