##M:[more]##Robert Johnson was first elected to the board of education three years ago. In the time since, he has become school board vice president, and seen three consecutive budgets and a $27 million referendum get approved.
“The referendum is one of our best accomplishments over the last three years,” says Johnson, who lives on Van Wyck Drive. “I was interested in attending to the physical condition of the schools, and I think we put together a decent referendum. We were very careful about the total cost while still addressing the most pressing needs of the district without increasing its debt service.”
He went to the State University of New York in Albany where he received his bachelors degree in 1974 and a masters in education in 1982. Johnson left education as a profession to begin working for the United States Marshall Service. He currently is administrator of the New Jersey division, headquartered in Newark, where he has worked since 1999 after having served at its New York branch and at its national headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
He and his wife, Linda, moved to West Windsor in 1992. They live on Van Wyck Drive with their daughter, Molly, an eighth grader at Grover Middle School.
Johnson’s father was also a teacher, and eventually became a middle school principal and member of the board of education in Rockland County, New York.
“At the end of three years, I feel like I’ve made an investment in learning,” says Johnson of his first term as a member of the school board.
Johnson extolls the value of having incumbents remain on the school board. “We are going to be facing some very difficult issues in the next three years. The state is imposing some caps that are going to be very difficult for this district to work under. The current board has spent a lot of time learning what kinds of decisions will face the board in the future.”
