Get To Know Scotch Plains School Candidate: Alfonse Akins

SCOTCH PLAINS, NJ — Alfonse G. Akins is one of the five candidates running for election in the contested 2018 Scotch Plains School Board election being held on Tuesday, Nov. 6.

There are five candidates vying for the three three-year seats on the board. Candidates include: Sean Keagan Foley, Debora J. Brody, Karen Kulikowski, Tonya Williams and Alfonse G. Akins.

Alfonse Akins

I have lived in Scotch Plains for 8 years with my wife and two kids – Matthew and Dea.

In all these years, I have always looked for ways to give back to our community.

Currently, I am a:

• Sitting commissioner and vice chairman of the Scotch Plains Parks and Recreation Commission.
• A recent leader and committee chairman for Pack 98 Cub Scouts.
• Founder of the Scotch Plains-Fanwood Youth Chess Club
• Youth basketball coach in our Scotch Plains Recreation

My main goal is to improve the lives of our students by helping those that are charged with educating our children – the Teachers and Guidance Counselors in our schools. Recently, my daughter graduated from Scotch Plains Fanwood High School. Throughout each of those four years, I discovered a grossly inadequate Counseling structure for our students. At a critical time when career guidance is most important as kids prepare for colleges, it was a major struggle to get any substantive time with the Guidance Counselors.

Right now, at SPF High, we have almost 1,600 students and a handful (six) guidance counselors - a horrible ratio of 267 students per counselor! This is absolutely not acceptable. The counselors are overloaded and overworked. As a result, students are left to fend for themselves when making critical career decisions. Some students get frustrated, fall through the gaps and drop out of school completely. The lack of access to quality time with counselors is a major contributing factor to our low college readiness and our very high dropout rate. We need to improve this wall of support for our students.

Secondly, we need to be more accountable to the hard-working taxpayers of Scotch Plains. We need to be considerate when exercising our taxing authority and in spending their hard-earned money. For the last 20 years straight, we have seen these automated annual tax increases even while property values continue to decline. Just because we were granted this taxing authority doesn’t mean we should automatically exercise that authority every single year – without thoughtful consideration for our fellow citizens’ personal economic conditions. The 2 percent tax cap is there for a reason. We need to respect that cap.

If elected, my goal is to cooperatively work with the rest of the Board to:

• Perform a comprehensive assessment of our current and future budget appropriations with a laser focus on prioritizing funding for impactful “in-classroom” professionals like teachers and guidance counselors. If our schools are to improve, we need to support the primary stewards of our kids. On any given day, these professionals spend more time with our kids than we do.
• Consider a temporary moratorium on tax increases until we better understand the economic impacts of these increases on our residents. On a long term basis, this annual ritual of “tax & spend” policy is not sustainable.

Those are my main priorities and the reason for my candidacy for Scotch Plains Board of Education. If elected, my goal is to work cooperatively with other board members to re-prioritize where we spend the 67 percent of your hard-earned property taxes bills that supports our school system. I will work with them to focus more of that money on providing classroom-specific resources for our teachers, counselors and students.

On Election Day – Nov. 6, I hope to have your support.

— (If you are a candidate and would like to participate in the profile, please email alexis.tarrazi@patch.com)

(Image provided: Alfonse Akins)

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