Letters
NJSBA urges residents to run for local boards

When New Year’s Day arrived this year, did you resolve to get involved? Did you say that this is the year you’re going to make a difference in your community?

If so, your opportunity may have arrived. I ask you to consider becoming a candidate for your local school board.

The deadline for candidates to submit their nominating petitions — the document that gets their name on the ballot — is Feb. 27. The annual school election is April 18.

As the president of the New Jersey School Boards Association (NJSBA) and a longtime local school board member, I can tell you that serving on a school board can be challenging, sometimes difficult, but ultimately rewarding.

What could be more meaningful than helping to shape the education of every child in your community’s public schools?

School boards don’t run the schools. That’s the job of the superintendent and principals. Rather, the school board works with the superintendent to set the goals and the agenda for the district.

The board annually evaluates the superintendent, and it also writes the policies under which the district operates. It oversees the budget, approves curriculum, and represents the public during contract negotiations.

Not surprisingly, the job demands a commitment of time, certainly more than simply attending a few meetings a month.

The job also demands that board members possess other skills. They must make and publicly defend sometimes difficult decisions. They must work as a team, because a school board member acting alone has no authority to make decisions for the district.

And, although the position is nonpartisan, it does require a certain level of political savvy and diplomacy. But above all, the board member must be committed to ensuring a quality education for the public school children in the community.

You can learn more about the issues affecting your schools by attending meetings, going online, and discussing candidacy with local education leaders.

Although school board members are unpaid lay representatives, they don’t step into the job unprepared.

Newly elected board members are required by law to attend an NJSBA orientation program, which provides the “basic training” for the board room. After that, board members may attend numerous training programs that NJSBA sponsors.

Think it’s time to make good on that New Year’s resolution? To learn more about running for the school board, NJSBA has published a Candidate Kit, which can be obtained online at www.njsba.org or through your local school district’s business office.

Consider candidacy. Because this just may be the year that you make a difference in your community!

Patti J. Pawling

president

New Jersey School

Boards Association

Farber ‘bad choice’ for state attorney general

Timing is everything, and the appointment of Zulima Farber to be New Jersey’s next attorney general could not have come at a worse time — for her. The media coverage of her past traffic violations really doesn’t begin to address the reasons she does not represent the mainstream New Jerseyan. Her beliefs in favor of “abortion rights and strict gun control,” as well as her “opposition to immigration restrictions and mandated minimum-sentencing laws,” fly in the face of all logic. Past experience proves her positions are out of step with the needs of our people.

I will not get into Roe v. Wade, as that issue is debated nationally on a daily basis. New Jersey also has gun control laws that make so much sense that they serve as a model for other states. The national problems with illegal immigration and the impact it has on the cost of services to our residents is well-documented. Mandatory — minimum — sentences make it so criminals now know that the saying “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime” is for real in New Jersey.

Ms. Farber is the wrong person for all of the above reasons.

New Jersey has changed attorneys general at an alarming rate. Turnover in such a major position does not serve the best interests of the public.

Robert A. Brown

Edison

Assemblymen help St. James’ food pantry

Every week articles are published in the newspaper concerning the high cost of living in New Jersey. Each month the working poor must make a choice to pay the rent or buy food for themselves and their families, and the choice is always to pay the rent, so there is very little money left to buy food.

Soup kitchens and food pantries throughout the nation are struggling to meet the needs of our society’s lower-income members. Many times during the year, St. James Food Pantry/Soup Kitchen in Edison has so many clients for lunch that it is a struggle to seat everyone. Our long-term goal is to raise enough money to construct a new building to relieve this overcrowding.

We at the food ministry would like to thank Assemblymen Peter Barnes and Patrick Diegnan Jr. (both D-18) for extending a helping hand and enabling us to obtain a grant toward this goal.

There is a saying “Never does a man stand so tall as when he stoops to help a child.” Assemblymen Barnes and Diegnan should stand 10 feet tall today because through their generosity and caring, we will be able to grow and continue to support the people who need that helping hand.

Jacqueline H. Goedesky

co-coordinator

food pantry ministry

St. James Episcopal Church

Edison