The six candidates for WW-P School Board — four from West Windsor and two from Plainsboro — were asked to give a brief biography and provide answers to the questions below. Their responses are listed in alphabetical order by last name.
1.) What experience, expertise, or perspective would you bring to the board? Which trait would be most useful?
2.) What’s your opinion of the district’s financial management, including annual increases in the budget and budget surplus amounts. If cuts are required, what one subject/activity/initiative would you cut first? What would you cut last? What area or areas would you increase funding for?
3.) The school district this year has budgeted about $1 million for increased security measures. What’s your view of the district’s safety program?
4.) What changes or additions, if any, would you make to the district’s foreign language offerings?
5.) The district is embarking on a new technology initiative for students. Should the district be more or less aggressive in pursuing this initiative and what would you cut from the budget to fund it?
6.) The state has mandated a salary cap for superintendents, and also mandates changes to the teacher evaluation and tenure process. How can WW-P ensure that students are not harmed by these changes?
7.) Are there any other school district issues you feel should be addressed?
Rakesh Kak is currently managing director at View Partners, an investment bank based in NYC where he advises companies in technology, media, and telecom industries on mergers and acquisitions and financings.
In the last 19 years Rakesh has worked at several Wall Street firms, such as Citigroup, UBS, Gruntal, and Kaufman, in areas ranging from mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity offerings, and structured finance, including project finance, lease finance, and securitization.
Prior to business school, Rakesh worked for six years as a software engineer for Prism, Unisys, and HCL.
Rakesh has an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School in New York City and is a graduate of the Indian Institutes of Technology with a bachelor of engineering in electrical engineering.
Rakesh moved to West Windsor in 2004 for its excellent school district, where his son attends High School South and his daughter attends Grover Middle School.
Rakesh serves on the Board of the Le-Parc Homeowners Association and has volunteered in several local organizations.
1.) I would bring three different perspectives to the school board.
First, a parent who has two children in the school system and who deeply cares about their education and their social development. As a board member I would strive to maintain the level of excellence in education achieved by the district.
Second, of a business and finance professional who has been working with people in team environments for the last 19 years going through budgets, financings, and mergers and acquisitions using analytical, financial, negotiating, and marketing skills.
Lastly, as a taxpayer and a homeowner to make sure our tax dollars are spent efficiently and that any board decision balances the interests of all stakeholders.
2.) In my opinion the board has done an effective job with the district’s financial management in recent years. The tax increases have been kept close to zero without cutting any major subject, activity, or initiative that was in demand. If cuts are needed we should first consider areas of improvements that have the least effect on students.
With the move to November elections the vote on the budget has been eliminated as long as the tax levy stays within the 2 percent cap. However, there will still be budget presentations to the public at school board meetings, and residents can have their voices heard during the “public comments” sections of those meetings. As a board member I will insist on maintaining the budget discipline that has resulted in reduction of our per-pupil expenses from $300 above the state average to $1,000 below the state average.
3.) Security is the utmost priority for all parents, and I applaud the increased measures the school has taken with its “Eyes on Doors” policy. I am also glad that the district did not take an emotional reactive approach to the horrible events at Newtown. They have made practical and financially prudent changes to the security system starting with the pilot program at Village and Millstone to be successfully expanded to the middle schools and beyond. We should continually get counsel from the West Windsor and Plainsboro police and fire departments as well as from parents on how to further make our schools safer without turning them into prisons. We should treat the elementary schools differently from the middle and high schools. We should also learn from the added measures taken by some of the other school districts in this respect.
4.) Our district is a model of world languages for many New Jersey schools and a nationally recognized leader in world language programs, being recently awarded the Melba D. Woodruff Award for its exemplary K-6 foreign language program. As with our general curriculum we should continually review and revise our world language curriculum and possibly eliminate and/or replace some of the undersubscribed language courses with courses that our students demand, e.g. due to the declining enrollment in Latin at the high school the district is now phasing out Latin, and the incoming high school freshmen have not been offered that language. We should also consider evaluating possible introduction of dual language immersion programs.
5.) The technological forest our kids have been born into is likely to grow impassable by the day. It is therefore imperative that our children are provided with the tools to maneuver through this jungle and be competitive for college and careers. We should prudently invest in proven technologies in the classrooms to give our kids a leg-up in this new world.
I hope we won’t have to cut the budget but will realize enough synergies through the introduction of these new technologies. I would consider this a cost “shifting” instead of cost “cutting.” For example, as we move more textbooks and other resources online, we should start seeing savings from reduction in the purchase of paper textbooks.
6.) The salary cap mandate for superintendents was a short-sighted decision on the part of Governor Christie. The intentions of the mandate were honorable — saving taxpayer money, but I believe it has had unintended, adverse consequences. As a result of these salary caps school districts in New Jersey are losing competent leaders to school districts in New York and Pennsylvania. This could put our school district and thus our children at a competitive disadvantage.
The additional feedback for the teachers under the new TEACHNJ law can only be a good thing for both teachers and students. I am optimistic that if this process works as intended, this law will further encourage and inspire skilled teachers to perform better. One issue with the law is that the evaluation criteria are not yet well defined. The implementation of this revised evaluation process in the coming years will be key, and we must ensure that the evaluation criteria are fair and equitable to all teachers. It is also essential that we provide professional development for supervisors to yield evaluations that are fair and constructive.
7.) An unknown that the school board must be ready to deal with is a sudden increase in the student population. West Windsor Township has already approved 800 new housing units at the Transit Village. A few additional units will come from the Ellsworth Center expansion and similar projects. It is still unclear what type of development will take place on the American Cyanamid property, but any major residential development on that site poses a significant challenge to future school boards.
