As the annual school election on Tuesday, April 20, draws near, the seven candidates who have filed to run for three open seats on the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional school board are weighing in on a number of hot-button issues this year, most namely keeping costs down in the rough economic climate.
The elections this year will be held on Tuesday, April 20. The West Windsor race has five candidates vying for two seats, while two candidates are seeking election to one seat in Plainsboro.
In West Windsor, incumbents Hemant Marathe, of Clarendon Court and Robert Johnson, of Van Wyck Drive, will face challengers Rakesh Kak, of Le Parc Court; Vijay Kanchi, of Greylynne Drive; and Scott Powell, of Cambridge Way. In Plainsboro, Ellen Walsh, of Petty Road will face challenger Harshad Tanna, of Krebs Road.
The News’ gathered information on the candidates’ backgrounds as well as their opinions regarding fiscal and educational impacts to the district. Below are profiles of each candidate.
West Windsor
Robert Johnson, an 18-year resident of West Windsor, moved to New Jersey from Washington, D.C. in 1991 to start a family, moving to to the township in 1992.
Johnson retired from the U.S. Marshals Service last summer and currently works as a financial specialist in criminal and civil forfeiture under contract with the U.S. Department of Justice. He has served on the board since 2004, where he has served on the administration and facilities committee and the finance committee, where he is currently chairman.
Johnson’s father taught high school industrial arts, general science, and physics, and then became a middle school principal. His mother raised seven children.
He has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the State University of New York at Albany. His wife is an investigator with the state Commission of Investigations, and the couple has a daughter at High School South.
Johnson said school finances will be the greatest challenge in the near term, and that “using technology wisely, both as an instructional tool and to measure educational outcomes and inform and improve instruction, is both smart and cost-effective. Ensuring that the schools in West Windsor-Plainsboro continue to improve and excel will require careful thought and prudent decision-making.”
Johnson said he believes that after serving for the past six years on the school board, he understands the substantial time required to understand and evaluate issues that come before the board.
“I also understand that I am one of nine members, and that if I can’t convince at least four other members of the soundness of my position, I won’t have much influence on the direction of the board,” he added. “I believe I’m generally a good listener, reasonably bright, usually patient, and willing to continue to put forth the effort required by the position.”
What does Johnson think are the three most important issues affecting the board? “Finances, finances, finances.”
“We have rough waters ahead to navigate, but I am confident that as long as decisions aren’t made rashly and imprudently, the district will not only weather this current crisis, but it will continue to excel,” he said.
Johnson pointed to the finance committee’s work with the administration to develop and implement cost-saving measures that have reduced the district’s per pupil costs from 5 percent above state average to 10 percent below state average. “The committee has also required that every suggestion become a routine and embedded part of the district’s operation,” he said. “Some recommendations are being implemented immediately (such as removing superfluous appliances from classrooms and common areas); others are not so easy (such as three-tier busing) and require more careful thought, since they will affect school schedules and existing contracts.”
Johnson lauded the unions representing the teachers and administration for voluntarily giving back $1 million, “with additional savings in 2011-2012.”
“I believe the trust and respect shared by the administration, district staff, and the school board will lead to further collaborative efforts in the future,” he said.
He also responded to public comments that criticized the board for “allowing teachers to postpone for one year a significant contribution toward medical benefits by extending the existing contract.”
Responded Johnson: “I would point out that the dollar value of give-backs offered by the teachers and administrators exceeded the value of the contributions proposed by the governor and will result in net savings to the district.”
“I also believe that the board will benefit from postponing the start of a challenging round of negotiations over a new contract from October 2010 to October 2011, since it is likely that this October, the district will be implementing the first year of outsourcing the building and grounds functions,” he added. “In that regard, it would have been irresponsible of the school board not to examine a significant opportunity to provide for greater economy and efficiency in arguably the least efficient activity — and one that has not been well-managed — and to lessen the burden of property taxes. As painful as the final decision will be, the school board will make any decision only after careful deliberation of all the facts and circumstances.”
Johnson said there were no areas of the budget that he would not, under any circumstance, cut. “I know of no area that doesn’t have the potential for increased economy or efficiency, and everything has to be on the table.”
Aside from finances, Johnson said he would like to improve the tools for evaluating staff. “Recent research on identifying the skills and attributes of a great teacher suggests strongly that teachers can improve their skills and become better at any point in their career,” he said. “I believe that this research holds out the promise of improvements in the way staff are evaluated, so that evaluation can become a more constructive, effective tool benefiting everyone — teachers, administrators, parents, and most of all, students.”
Rakesh Kak, a West Windsor resident for six years, moved to the township in 2004. Kak is currently a managing director at View Partners, an investment baking firm in New York. His mother was a school teacher and his father was in the Armed Forces.
Kak, 44, has a MBA in finance from the Columbia Business School in New York and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in India. His wife, Suneeta, works for a software company in Plainsboro. The couple has two children attending Dutch Neck Elementary and Grover Middle schools.
Additionally, Kak also serves on the board of Le Parc I Homeowners Association and has been a volunteer and coach for the local soccer and softball teams.
He said he is seeking election because he wants to volunteer his time and service to the community. He said he also has a vested interested in participating “shaping the school policy for the future,” ensuring it is the best affordable education for his children.
The most compelling issues to him are the “unsustainable yearly school budget increases leading to property tax increases, combined with the conspicuous decline in our high school rankings,” said Kak.
Kak said he has experience working on Wall Street for over 16 years, including his work with companies ranging from large caps to startups and in industries including technology, telecom, healthcare, and government. “I have advised these companies in their capital raising efforts, their merger and acquisitions, as well as their restructuring efforts,” he said. “I am quite comfortable in dealing with budgets, regulations, tax implications, as well as understanding the perspective of the various stakeholders in a transaction and consider myself to be a quick study.”
He said he feels the three most important issues are the state aid cut of $7.6 million, and similar cuts in the future; the “unsustainable tax burden” for residents and “the burgeoning costs of benefits for the school employees;” and the slipping in the high school rankings in certain state-wide polls.
Specifically, Kak said he would recommend an ongoing review of several programs throughout the year to uncover areas where efficiency can be achieved. He said he would identify programs that should be altered and those that should be either expanded or eliminated.
He said he would also like to sit down with the teachers’ and administrators’ unions to find ways to run the schools more efficiently by removing any redundancies and reducing overhead. He said he would also like to find ways to optimize the $23 million spent in special services, which is equivalent to almost 50 percent of the regular instruction budget and is being spent for only 10 percent of the student population, he said.
He would also “consider optimizing class sizes and merging/eliminating courses, clubs, or sports that are undersubscribed.”
He called the board’s renegotiated contract with the teachers and administrators “shortsighted,” pointing specifically to the extension for another year that includes salary increases.
“With a negative inflation and an unemployment rate that has doubled since 2007, and when most of us in the real world are just glad to keep our jobs, it is outrageous to guarantee these salary increases for another year in addition to the automatic increases in benefits costs.”
Kak also pointed to the state legislation requiring a minimum contribution to health benefits no later than upon the expiration of all public employee contracts. “But since the school district has already extended the contacts until 2012, we have to wait to realize this benefit.”
With regard to specific areas in the budget, Kak “would objectively look at all line items in the budget to ensure an efficient allocation of resources and to achieve cost effective ways to improve operations,” he said. “However, I would be very hesitant to cut any character education programs, as well as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) areas, to keep our children competitive with the rest of the world.
“In addition, anything that has a direct impact on classroom and laboratories — such as instructional aids (lab equipment, interactive technologies, educational field trips) would be off my list of cuts.”
In non-fiscal areas, Kak said he would like to improve the technology in the schools “to better prepare our children to face the real world when they graduate.” This would include introducing new innovative technologies in the classrooms; introducing online learning; and introducing more interactive and personalized experience for the children, such as using voice recognition technology to help special education students with their assignments, he said. “We should add more laboratories in science to provide the hands-on experience and maybe add more field trips in a cost-effective manner.”
Vijay Kanchi, a telecommunications consultant, moved to the township in 2006 to relocate for a job.
Kanchi’s parents were involved with international economic development. He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in computer information engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology. He and his wife, Jaya, a substitute teacher, have two children, both of whom attend Maurice Hawk.
Kanchi, 40, said he wants to run for election to help “define and execute policies for the school system that will continue to strengthen its curriculum and produce well-rounded students in a fiscally responsible manner.”
He said that in light of the state aid cuts and financial crisis, the board needs to encourage the administration to take a critical view of all the costs and programs.
They need to “continually evaluate what works, what is marginal, and what doesn’t, and prior to making the final decision, the board must consider and understand the full budgetary impact of any proposed program,” Kanchi said.
Kanchi said he feels he will be able to make use of his 18 years of business experience in listening to people, considering multiple issues, and applying core values to drive decisions. “I will be able to provide guidance as a board member toward continuous improvement to school programs, co-curricular activities by leveraging best practices from educators, innovators, and administrators that will continue to propel West Windsor-Plainsboro schools as a leading school system.”
He said the three most important issues to him are academic programs, co-curricular activities, and responsible spending.
Kanchi said that while the board saved some $1 million in the recent salary renegotiations, the $7.56 million state aid decrease means that addition cuts are needed. “These cost reductions need to be achieved by further driving down operational costs and taking a critical look at all programs.”
With regard to specific areas in the budget, Kanchi said that “all options on cuts must remain open while ensuring that decisions are based on core values of academic excellence and producing well-rounded students.”
Kanchi said he would also like to “foster an environment that promotes students who will be leaders in global competitiveness, green technologies, and responsible and ethical behavior.”
Hemant Marathe, a 16-year resident of West Windsor, moved to the township from Syracuse as a result of his wife’s job transfer. His father was an engineer and then owned his own business later in life, and his mother is a homemaker.
Marathe’s wife, Punit, to whom he has been married for 23 years, works as a scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb. The couple has four daughters, the oldest of whom graduated from North and is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania. His second daughter is a sophomore at North, while the youngest — twins — are in the seventh grade at Community Middle School.
Marathe, 47, earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Washington. For the last three years, he has been a partner in a company that is a wholesale distributor of Indian Groceries. For 15 years before that, he owned a consulting company that worked with electric utilities.
Marathe has served on the board for the last nine years, from 2001 to 2010, where he has served as president since 2004. He served one year on the board’s finance committee and for eight years on the curriculum committee. When his daughters were younger, he coached recreational soccer for a number of years. He is also a member of the Lions club and the Princeton Toastmasters club.
He said he is running for re-election because he is very interested in serving the district, especially during a time where it faces serious financial challenges. “I decided it was not time to hang up my shoes in the middle of a storm. I do feel my experience will be valuable to the school board.”
The most compelling issue to him, therefore, is maintaining the district’s excellence in the face of the current financial challenges. “We need to address how to get used to the ‘new normal’ while least affecting the high quality educational experience from the student’s point of view.”
His experience as a board member, and its president, is his strongest asset, he said. “During this time, I had the opportunity to experience both a dysfunctional board as well as a board that works as a team to achieve objectives of the district. I have had the privilege of working with three different superintendents and several assistant superintendents. Each has taught me important lessons on how to handle difficult issues and how to build consensuses.”
It is this collaborative approach between administrators, teachers, parents, and the board that “speaks for itself,” Marathe said, pointing to the district’s average per pupil cost that is $300 less than the state average, even as the district maintains its position as one of the top districts in the state.
Marathe also said he believed the area of finances was the most important. “How do we adjust to the lower spending level without significantly degrading the education for the children?”
When it comes to easing the burden to taxpayers, Marathe recalled the board’s actions since 2002. “Between 2002 and 2009, we controlled our budget by bringing eight special services programs in-house, reducing two administrative, 18 secretarial, and 17 instructional assistant positions while serving more than 1,000 additional students. The upcoming budget planning continues that process by realigning the supervisory structure and not filling the positions of three retiring administrators.”
Marathe pointed to the actual dollars spent per student, which is $4,000 less than Princeton and $2,000 less than Hopewell and Lawrence. “This approach of continuous improvement has served our taxpayers well over the last nine years. I will continue this approach in the future.”
Marathe applauded the teachers’ and administrators’ unions for coming to the table and working with the district to find over $1 million in savings by renegotiating their contracts. He said the move allowed the district to minimize the tax impact this year — until the governor slashed 71 percent from the district’s state aid.
“There is no easy way to survive a $7 million budget cut with 24 hours notice without affecting the quality of education,” he said. “I would like to explore every option that would allow us to protect personnel, but given the severity of the cut, that may not be possible.”
Further, given the fiscal climate in the state, Marathe said he could not guarantee that any specific area would not be touched. However, he pointed to a principle employed by the board this year — that the cuts should first come from areas that have the least effect on students.
With regard to non-financial areas of school business, Marathe pointed to the continual analysis and improvements to academic subject areas every five years. As a result of the math review, he and the members of the board have made changes that will ensure every child takes an algebra course before starting high school.
Scott Powell, a West Windsor resident for four years, Powell moved to West Windsor in 2006 to relocate for a job.
Powell, 37, is a product manager for Prudential Financial. “In this role, I ensure that we provide high quality service to both the institutions that purchase our defined benefit annuity products and the individuals who receive the benefits,” explained Powell. “This role also includes responsibility for managing revenues and expenses for our defined benefit products such that we meet our profitability targets.”
He and his wife, Michele, an operations director for a professional trade organization, have two children — a seven-year-old who attends first grade at Maurice Hawk Elementary and a four-year-old in pre-school. Powell has coached soccer with the West Windsor-Plainsboro Soccer Association.
His mother was an elementary school teacher, then as a bank branch manager, and then as an entrepreneur — opening her own successful private elementary school. His father worked as a portfolio manager in the investment management industry.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and then his master’s of business administration from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
Powell said he decided to run to ensure that the children have the best education possible. “Second, in an increasingly challenging fiscal environment, I can help find ways to continue providing an excellent education at a lower cost.”
One of the most compelling issues to Powell is the fiscal pressure induced by the state and the reduced funding to school districts, including WW-P. “This will force the district to make hard choices about our educational priorities and how we will continue to provide a high quality education with less money.”
Powell said he has the leadership and analytical capabilities necessary to help guide the district “through a very challenging financial environment. In my professional experience, over the last four years, I have been leading a product team at Prudential to strong customer service scores and continued business profitability.”
“In these difficult times, the board needs strong leadership to provide new ideas and a willingness to try new ways to provide a high quality education. I have these qualities,” Powell said. “With my education in engineering and business experience, I have also developed strong analytical skills. These include looking at business information — revenues, expenses, production information, and quality reports — and recognizing the trends and relevant information to make appropriate decisions.”
Powell said the most important issues affecting the district are keeping costs at the lowest possible level necessary to provide the highest quality education, but keep taxes as low as possible.
With regard to easing the burden on taxpayers, the school board should apply the same principles used by successful businesses to find better and cheaper ways to provide a high quality education, he said.
“Specifically, we should study” successful education systems in other countries, college education, and professional certifications and education programs,” Powell said. “We should look for common success factors among these models and apply them where possible in our district.”
With regard to the board’s approval of a re-negotiated contract with the teachers’ and administrators’ unions, which froze the first three months of pay in the upcoming year for savings of over $1 million, Powell said the move “lacks boldness and seems out of touch with reality.”
“The contract was signed right before the country entered a severe economic downturn,” he said. “As a result, the pay increases in the contract have been higher than most workers in the broader workforce have received at the same time. Although this move helps the district balance the budget in the coming fiscal year, the district should have done more. We need to challenge teachers to play a larger role in solving our financial difficulties.”
He said there are no areas of the budget that, under any circumstances, he would not look for cuts. Aside from the financial aspect of serving on the board, Powell wants to “learn how the district partners with local businesses to expose the students to life after school. We should maximize our local business resources to provide our students as much real world experience as possible before graduation.”
Plainsboro
Harshad Tanna moved to Plainsboro in 2001 because of a job. His father was an engineer with a utility company in India.
Tanna, 45, a senior scientist with Telcordia Technologies, has a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, India. He and his wife, Mauna, an accountant with Marriott, have two daughters — one in high school and one in middle school.
He said he is running for election because “I deeply care about education.”
“Whatever I have achieved in my life so far is entirely due to my education,” Tanna said. “I come from a humble family background in India and without that education, I wouldn’t be here.”
Tanna said the most compelling issue to him is the area of finance. “Despite the school administration’s repeated claims of moderation in spending, over the past year or so, it has become clear to me that it has failed to manage school spending in a sustainable way.”
Referring to the latest state Department of Education comparative spending guide of 2009, Tanna said there are 105 school districts comparable to WW-P, and in the state’s ranking of lowest to highest spenders, WW-P ranks 47 in comparative cost, 50 in the cost of classroom instruction, 42 for operations cost, 79 in administrative salaries, and 94 for teachers salaries. “These rankings are indicative of the failure to control spending,” he said. “This has resulted in an increasing tax burden on WW-P taxpayers, even in an adverse economic climate. This trend is unsustainable.”
Tanna said he feels he is the best fit for the job because while he cares about the quality of education, he also believes that school spending has to be managed in a sustainable manner. “I do not underestimate the complexity of the issues,” Tanna said. “I have patience, passion, and perseverance to deal with the complexities of the school budget so that spending is brought under control with minimal impact” to educational programs.
The two most important issues, according to Tanna, are spending and communication. “There are some costs that are beyond the school board’s control,” like health insurance costs, “but in many other areas, the board does have influence.” He said the district has a “dubious distinction of having one of the lowest rankings for spending toward administration salaries and teachers’ salaries.” This, he said, is because of the experience level of the teachers and administrators. “However, you do find districts like Montgomery that have been able to achieve excellence in education while keeping the spending under check. We need to benchmark our district against such district and learn from them.”
With regard to communication, he said a lot of the board’s decisions are made in committees and that public meetings have not been used to effectively explain the details of the decision-making process. “in the public meeting, one rarely gets to hear individual board members’ views on many of the decisions. I believe better communication would help gain public support for some of the hard decisions that the board would need to make in the near future.”
He said the largest cost components in any school are going to be salaries and benefits, and “unless the board finds a way to control increases in salaries and benefits, the savings in other areas will hardly make much difference for taxpayers. This is the most critical issue, and the current board has been unable to do anything in that regard.”
Tanna also said that “any lay person” could have determined that the economy was going through a rough patch last September, when it “approved a 3.5 percent increase.”
Tanna said he would target cuts to administrative costs by consolidating positions across the school district. He would also cut the cost of staff benefits by asking for staff contributions toward their benefits, and reversing the trend of year-over-year salary increases by renegotiating the contracts.
The $1 million savings from the board’s renegotiation of the teachers’ and administrators’ contracts “turns out to be a short-term budgeting maneuver. The board accepted a very weak bargain of rolling back teachers’ pay raises for three months in return for an extension of their contracts by one year that gives them a 3.8 percent increase.
“This is a really bad deal for the taxpayers, as it locks the district into a contract that requires no contribution toward benefits,” he added. “With legislation requiring such contributions making its way through the state assembly, the board shouldn’t have extended the contract.”
Tanna said he would not exclude any area in the budget from cuts. “However, I will oppose any across-the-board (non-targeted) cuts that affect core instructional programs,” he added.
Aside from the financial aspect of school business, Tanna commended the administration and board for its work toward excellence in education in the schools. “I am very satisfied with the school operations in other areas.”
Ellen Walsh, a 12-and-a-half year resident of Plainsboro, moved to Plainsboro from Dover, DE, when her husband, Quentin, who works in the financial/accounting field, took a position in New York.
Walsh’s father was a steamfitter, and her mother was a homemaker. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Queens College, City University of New York, and an MBA from St. John’s University in Jamaica, New York. She currently serves as an adjunct assistant professor of economics at Rider University.
Walsh will be married to her husband for 30 years in November. The two have two children, both of whom are graduates of South. Walsh has served on the school board for the past six years and has chaired the administration and facilities committee for the last five.
Walsh also served two terms as president of the South PTSA and was on the fundraising committee for Post Prom. She also served as a volunteer on the School Capacity Study and has been involved with Boy Scouts as the Committee Chair of the Troop and a member of the District Advancement Committee. Currently, she is a volunteer coach for a Special Olympics bowling team.
She originally ran for election to the board to bring attention to the deteriorating condition of the district’s older school buildings. “I was the leader of the 2006 referendum that was strongly supported by the community and has provided the needed repairs and additions to being all of our buildings up to the standard we would like to maintain,” said Walsh. “I feel very proud of what was accomplished, particularly at Dutch Neck, Wicoff, and South. For the future, I would like to see that we continue to focus our efforts on continual improvements and necessary repairs so that our infrastructure does not fall into disrepair.”
Walsh said the administration and facilities committee has implemented a capital improvement plan that will allow for scheduled and corrective maintenance in sequenced manner. “This type of planning is crucial to avoiding the high cost of crisis-type repairs,” she said.
The most compelling issue to Walsh is the need to keep costs in check. “The difficult economic climate necessitates making every dollar count and saying ‘no’ to items that are not essential to the mission of the district,” she explained.
Walsh said she believes in public education and has been involved since her children started school. “I am willing to do whatever it takes to make the system work on behalf of all of our students,” she said.
A critical issue to Walsh is maintaining the excellence in education, despite the 71 percent reduction in state aid. In order to ease the burden on taxpayers, Walsh said the board “should make sure that classes are not under-enrolled, and we can do that by creating a minimum class size. We are evaluating all areas to be as cost-effective as possible.”
With regard to the renegotiated contracts, Walsh said the move “provides a real savings in the coming year. It allows for a fourth year at which the district will realize a smaller salary increase than has been negotiated in recent contracts. This agreement also provides savings in conference fees and other expenses.”
When asked whether there would be any areas she would not consider cutting in the budget, Walsh said that “everything should be on the table.”
When it comes to school issues unrelated to finance, Walsh said she would like to “see some relief from the myriad of rules and regulations that the Department of Education imposes on the district. The district has made many improvements in communication, but there is always room for more.”
