Why I'm Running: Achievement, Creativity, and Responsibility

Wayne Eastman

First, I’m proud to be running as part of a team with Madhu Pai and Jeffrey Bennett, two newcomers to board politics who share a deep commitment to education and stellar skills as researchers and generators of thoughtful new ideas.  

A good school board needs a blend of dynamic newcomers such as Madhu and Jeff and experienced members.  As a six-year board veteran and a twenty-year resident of South Orange, I bring a wealth of useful experience to the table. 

I chair the Finance, Facilities, and Technology Committee, and in 2011 I initiated a Global Education & Innovation Task Force that is now developing recommendations on innovative, cost-effective, and globally-oriented instruction.   

Early in my board service, I helped develop the approach that we continue to use to assess our performance relative to our peer districts and to evaluate the performance of our only employee, the Superintendent. 

As a board member, I have focused on governance.  I have worked hard to combine collegiality and cooperativeness with respectful independence from administration and consistent adherence to the fundamental principle that the basic vision and mission of our district belong to the board as the elected representatives of the community.

Over my years in town, I have volunteered for Friends and Neighbors, served as an officer in the Community Coalition on Race, and started GlobalSOMA, a non-profit devoted to celebrating our towns as international communities.   Although these activities are distinct from my school board work, they all relate to my strong interest in promoting South Orange and Maplewood as welcoming, appealing communities for people of all backgrounds.

Over the next three years, I look forward to making progress together with Jeff and Madhu and my other board colleagues on three major goals. 

First, I look forward to making measurable progress in advancing achievement by all—by struggling students, by a middle that is too easily neglected, and by high-flyers. 

To improve the chances of struggling students, we need to be active in elementary school, where there is a much better chance of closing gaps than later on.   

More school is a proven way to help struggling students.  More school is also a very good option for all students in a new century in which the United States faces intensifying economic and educational competition from nations around the world.

A central aim of the Global Education and Innovation Task Force I started is to bring together an array of after-school, online, and other initiatives under the direction of an innovation-minded leader reporting to the Superintendent.   

Imagine young children learning Mandarin or another foreign language; imagine the same children and others gaining additional skills in reading at a young age when catch-up intervention for struggling students and reach-up intervention for students in the broad middle and the top can really make a difference.  Working together, we can and should make all of this, and more, into a reality in our schools.  

A second goal of mine over the next three years is to be a key part of a board with a creative vision for our schools.

Part of that creative vision would involve building on and extending the progressive past and present of South Orange-Maplewood, with the aim of making our district a destination whose attractiveness equals or surpasses that of any district in New Jersey for families who seek the best possible progressive education options for their children. 

Our progressive past and present is reflected in choice programs such as multi-age at Marshall School and the Howard Gardner-inspired multiple intelligences program at Seth Boyden School, where my wife and I chose to send our children.   In the spirit of these initatives, I support a new voluntary progressive education program, which could involve the International Baccalaureate Program and which might be fully or substantially leveled-up, at Columbia High School.    

On academic placement, let’s think going forward about alternatives to both mandated, inflexible levels and mandated, inflexible deleveling.  Let’s make the recently passed middle school level-up plus IB MYP proposal work—and for the high school, let’s think creatively about how parents and students can make informed choices of college prep, advanced college prep, and honors classes with consultation and consequences.

Another key part of a creative vision for our district involves using cost-effective online, after-school, and summer programs to create as many or more opportunities for AP classes, academically challenging electives, and accelerated work here as in any district in New Jersey.   Let’s make South Orange and Maplewood a magnet for families--both families who are new to America and to New Jersey and families long-established here--who want their children to have the best possible chance to succeed at work as advanced as that being done by public school students in any school system in our state, our nation, and the world.  

Some examples of opportunity-expanding initiatives for advanced work that I favor are the creation of acceleration options for highly skilled, hard-working math students in elementary school, middle school acceleration in Social Studies that would enable our best and most ambitious history students to take the AP World History exam in ninth grade, and additional AP courses in subjects such as Economics and Computer Science.

Third and last but not least, I believe that we should work together to advance a shared commitment to responsibility.  

Responsibility means fiscal responsibility.   As a board member and now as finance chair, I have supported transparent budgets with a low, 2% tax increase rather than the higher rates of increase that prevailed in the past.

Responsibility means good board governance, with a board that is collegial but that is not afraid of respectful dissent and does not duck its basic charge to determine the vision and mission of the district.

In regard to academic placement and other matters involving decisions as to core values, both hosannas and brickbats aimed at the Superintendent are misplaced.  He is a highly skilled employee who will act in accord with the Board-delineated vision and mission of our schools.  It it is the Board, not the Superintendent, that must be held accountable for the basic direction we take. 

Fundamentally, responsibility means all of us—board members, administrators, teachers, parents, and students—stepping up and doing all we can to make things better.  It means dealing in every way we can with the planks in our own eyes, not with bemoaning the dust motes in the eyes of others.

We have an exceptionally strong community in terms of our civic culture and the energy, passion, and quality of our volunteers.   I am proud to be part of that Maplewood and South Orange civic culture.  

Twenty years ago, Darcy and I moved to South Orange from Newark with our toddler son and infant daughter.  Now Jonathan—Columbia High School class of 2009—is a student at Rutgers-New Brunswick and Caroline—Columbia High School class of 2011--is a student at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.  I feel very lucky to have had them go through our schools from kindergarten to graduation, and I am committed to providing future opportunities for all our children in South Orange and Maplewood that are as good as and, yes, even better than the ones that my own children have been fortunate to enjoy.

I believe I’ve done a good job on the Board.  I also believe that a victory for Madhu, Jeff, and myself can help catalyze positive change in our schools that Maplewood and South Orange are ready to embrace.   I ask for your support on April 17^th.        

For more information about Madhu, Jeff, and me and how to get involved in our campaign, please visit our website, www.voteSOMA2012.com.    As our lawn signs say, Expect More!