Take Five: Madison School Board Candidate David Steketee

MADISON, NJ — There are seats opening up on the Madison Board of Education and Patch caught up with the candidates ahead of the general election this November.

Questionnaires were sent out out to all candidates registered with the County Clerk's Office in the 2019 general election using the email addresses they went on file with. The responses will be posted on the site by those who submitted in the order in which they were received. They will also be included in an election preview wrap.

This Take Five features David Steketee. His responses to the questions are below and unedited.

1. Why are you running for BOE?

Three years ago I was struck by the complete lack of attention to the plight of economically disadvantaged students in our district. At the time, when discussing PARCC results, the district focused on the performance of all students without any consideration for stark differences in how this segment of students performed relative to the rest of the district. Madison had approximately 190 (8%) students identified as economically disadvantaged in the 2018-2019 school year. Based upon the available data, when tracked year over year, as a group this population of students has made negligible progress toward grade-level performance over the past four years. We cannot continue to pat ourselves on the back while continuing to fail this group of children. We need to address this challenge to ensure economically disadvantaged students do not continue to build up educational debt, and have an equal opportunity for success. This particular challenge is important not just to help these students, but by bringing more students up to grade-level performance we free up teaching resources to the benefit of everyone.

If this weren't enough, the district faces ongoing financial challenges. The district faces long term fiscal pressure because salaries and benefits, representing 80% of the budget, grow faster than the district's ability to raise revenue through property taxes. To be clear, I do not begrudge the salaries teachers earn or the benefits they receive. But, it may be valuable to evaluate the utilization of medical and dental benefits to determine if there are more cost effective options for providing the same quality of coverage. And, teachers are not the only salaried employees in the district. We should evaluate business processes and technology options for the district to alleviate the amount of manual work currently performed by secretarial staff. Ideally, eliminating manual work would not result in reduced head count, but would allow the district to better leverage these staff to manage the district more effectively.

In addition to the long term challenges, the district has more immediate financial issues. In three out of the past five years, the school district has run an operating deficit. Each year this gap was closed through a combination of prior-year surpluses, or use of reserves to cover operating expenses. This approach to closing the gap is completely legitimate, but I believe it is important for operating expenses to be covered by operating revenue, which is to say, the costs of running the district each year should be covered by taxes, grants, and aid without relying on prior year surpluses or transfers from long term reserves.

I am running for Board of Education because I believe I bring a unique set of skills and experience from data analysis to business process design, from financial modelling to project management, which can all help the district address these challenges.

2. What is the biggest challenge facing schools in your town, and how will you address it?

I believe our district's ongoing operating deficit represents a substantial challenge as balancing the budget annually means making tough decisions over how to fund the district. To address this challenge, I would propose, 1) identifying areas for revenue generation such as insourcing profitable programs which are currently outsourced, and solar power generation 2) regularly rebidding and/or consolidating contracts for frequent services, e.g. plumbing, HVAC, electrical, tree service, copiers, etc., and 3) evaluating opportunities for shared services between districts, e.g. special education busing. By both reducing expenses and increasing revenue, the district should be able to close the operating budget gap to reduce reliance on reserves and other one-time revenue sources.

3. What three words would you use to describe yourself to someone who has never met you?

Thoughtful, creative, driven.

4. What experience in your background has prepared you to be an effective leader?

For me, an important attribute of being a leader is communications whether that communication is to other members of the board, district administration, or parents and the community at large. Over my twenty year career in technology, I have learned to understand stakeholder needs in order to effectively communicate to those stakeholders. By having to understand people's concerns, and information needs when communicating to colleagues, customers, and vendors (twelve of those years at a global professional services firm), I have developed valuable communications skills which will benefit the district and allow me to be an effective leader as a member of the board of education.

5. Tell me something about you, like hobbies or interests, that have nothing to do with the campaign.

While working as a photographer for a music magazine in St. Louis, I was asked to go on tour with The Samples to photograph the tour. For better or worse, I turned down the opportunity since I had to go back to college for the fall semester.

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