Bridgewater-Raritan School Board Election 2022: Lanfang 'Lucy' Li

BRIDGEWATER, NJ — Bridgewater-Raritan Regional Board of Education general election on Nov. 8 has seven candidates running for four open seats.

Lanfang "Lucy" Li is running for one of the three, three-year full-term seats representing Bridgewater.

Opposing candidates include Saad Toor, Steven Singer, Sally Bartlett, Lynne Hurley, Emily Calistri, and June Wang.

There is also one, one-year unexpired seat representing Raritan open. There are no candidates for that seat at the moment.

Are you running for office in Bridgewater? Contact Alexis Tarrazi at alexis.tarrazi@patch.com for information on being featured in a candidate's profile and submitting campaign announcements to Bridgewater Patch.

(All of the candidates were given the same questions)

Lanfang "Lucy" Li

Age: N/A

Town of residence: Bridgewater, NJ

Position sought: Bridgewater Raritan Regional School District, Board of Education

Family: Married, live with husband and 3 children.

Education: PhD

Occupation: scientist, educator, entrepreneur

Previous or current elected appointed office: None

Campaign website: www.LiforBOE.info

Why are you seeking to run for School Board?

I am running for the Board of Education because education is so important for our children. The parents have the responsibility to make sure the children receive adequate and quality education that will prepare them well for life. As a parent in the community, I would like to serve on the Board of Education to help make sure the schools provide the quality education for the children.

I think community involvement is very important. Transparency in school curriculum, finance, resources, and programs is crucial. Effective, timely and interactive communication betweenthe school district and community will enable making decisions to benefit all families in the community. I would like to help further improve the connection, and enhance the role of community in the schools, to support the schools in ways more than paying our property tax dollars. Local community collectively is the sponsor and stakeholder. No matter how much the school district posts information for the public, if it was not read by the community and got through, the communication would not be effective. When parents of the community don’t know what is going on in the schools as a result, the transparency level would be low consequentially. Communication effectively can take tremendous effort.

The school district, the parents and the greater community are all on the same mission to make our school district the best it can be for our children. I would strive to help the community and school more connected, as in my campaign slogan: “Transparency, Efficiency, Community”.

School security has been an issue raised recently. Do you feel the Board and administration are handling this properly? And why?

I think school safety is important, and I commend the school district in promptly and proactively taking measures to improve security. That being said, if I am asked if anything can be further improved, I think the administration could do more at communicating to the community why certain decisions were made. It would be great to know whether the funding needed to do so was relocated from a source that would not impact teaching quality. The school district could also hold specific public town hall meetings or surveys to further improve the communication with community so that there is adequate opportunity to ask parents and community for input, for something like this that is of extensive public interest.

A referendum is in the works looking to focus on fixing school building infrastructure and adding full-day kindergarten. How do you feel about this?

The referendum is to be voted in March 2023. It contains two questions, each question can be voted yes or no. I will share first my understanding of the two questions and then my thoughts.

The first question is whether to approve an infrastructure renovation that will renovate most of the schools with modernized classrooms. This option will keep the grades as is in each school, and continue the setup unchanged. The school district in the past years has been able to pay off a significant amount of debt (from last referendum with building Milltown school), and the cost of the proposed infrastructure renovation could be financed with a similar amount as the past debt payment, tax levy could be kept neutral. Although I am not sure whether there might be a tax reduction if this option is voted no.

The second question as I understand is a combined middle school expansion and infrastructure addition to accommodate expanding half day kindergarten to full day. This involves a few grade level changes: expanding middle school so that 6 th grade can be moved there from the intermediate school joining the current 7 th and 8 th grades, move 4 th grade to intermediate schools, making room for expanding half day kindergarten to full day in the elementary schools. According to the brochure by the school district, there will be a tax increase of a couple hundred dollars for the cost of infrastructure expansion, but this estimate does not include personnel cost and other potential accompanying expenses, which will be determined later.

To have a full day or half day kindergarten has been a topic for a few years in the past, and I have heard voices from both sides. I personally have young children, and I understand full day kindergarten would be very convenient, but I also understand the reasons from members of the community against it, mainly with concerns of long days for 5-year-olds, making the children too tired. There was also concern about higher tax causing stress for general public, particularly stressing senior citizens. In 2021, I asked a Board of Education member about the full day kindergarten, and her response was that there was no proven educational benefit to full day kindergarten program vs. half day to justify the change. Our community is home to many families with different situations, including families with young children as well as senior citizens with limited income, and families with no school age children at home, while the tax change affects everyone in town. It is ultimately the tax payers’ collective decision. I support students having state of the art learning facilities. I personally support the infrastructure renovation. To decide on referendum question 2, I will need more information to become available, and I will follow up requesting such information.

What other issues do you feel need to be tackled in the school district?

I believe our teachers are great contributors to the well-being of our community by educating our children. I would like to express my appreciation and support for our teachers. Teaching is hard work and requires high professional expertise. The teachers are interacting with the students day to day, nurturing and educating the children with love and passion. We have good schools because of our good teachers.

At the same time, it should be recognized that parents are also an active part in the education and the stakeholders for the children’s education. The school district should put students first and consider the community’s voice to take appropriate actions. It is to be noted that this is a year of change. The 2020 New Jersey State Learning Standards (2020 NJSLS) compliance is expected by the state in 2022-2023 school year. Parents needs to know: What are the curriculum changes? What are the options? How to exercise parent’s choice (for example, opt out). Parents and community feedback should be sought, giving parents and teacher ample room to work together for the best interest of the students.

For interested readers, please check out the following links for more information. I would like to commend the effort the school district made, posting the information on district website. For parents, it is a lot of material and can be hard to read all, but I highly recommend parents to invest the time and effort to do so. If I can offer a pointer to navigate, changes are introduced in physical education, gender identity and related topics. Parents who needs to know when these are going to be covered in school and how, need to go to such resources and find out the information to make the best decision for their children. No matter how much information the school district posted, if community haven’t read adequately, communication would be ineffective. The parents need to ramp up effort, in this year of many changes, to work best with the teachers and best educate the children.

1. 2020 New Jersey Learning Standards (2020 NJSLS), compliance expected by state 2022-2023 school year. https://www.nj.gov/education/c...
2. Bridgewater Raritan school’s curriculum according to the 2020 NJSLS https://brrsdk12-public.rubico...

What sets you apart from the other challenging candidates?

I am a devoted mom and I deeply love children. But professionally I am trained to use analytical skills to problem solving. I will take a systematic and objective approach, collecting input and information, analyzing all aspects and making well informed decisions. I have experiences in industry, university and post graduate institutes to leverage for my service on the Board of Education. I am committed and passionate to serving the community.

What else would you like to share about yourself or your campaign?

My campaign is not about me, or any of my personal interest, it is about the students, the parents and families in our community, it is about improving parents and community involvement and together, ensuring quality education and best interest for the children.