Pattye Benson

Community Matters

school board candidates

Tredyffrin, Region 2 Candidates for TE School Board respond

TE School Board Candidates for Tredyffrin, Region 2
Michele Burger
Kris Graham
Ed Sweeney
Alan Yockey

The TE School Board candidates were asked to answer the following question in 500 words or less.

Although there are many important issues facing the TE School District, what one issue will you focus on should you be elected? As a school board director, what in your background, experience or education prepares you to help with this specific issue.

The four candidate responses follow below in alphabetical order according to last name. If your question and/or comment is for a specific candidate, please refer to that individual by name so as not to confuse. Voters will select two of these candidates in November for the school board.

TE School Board Candidate Michele Burger
Tredyffrin, East – Region 2

Thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself. I’m Michele Burger, School Board candidate for Region 2. My family and I moved to the Glenhardie neighborhood in Wayne 17 years ago. As parents of three young children, we considered a number of communities but chose Tredyffrin because of its nationally ranked schools. We are very pleased that we did. All of our children have received excellent preparation for college and beyond.

Over the past 15 years, I have volunteered Mat every level of my children’s schooling including serving as PTO president at Valley Forge elementary. I have actively participated in monthly School Board meetings as well as finance and facilities subcommittee meetings. I have been a community activist and liaison regarding School Board decisions that impact residents of Region 2.

These experiences have afforded me the opportunity to work with many different committees, levels of school district personnel, township personnel, and community members. In every instance, I strove to maintain open communication, to look for creative solutions when needed, and to consider our tax burden and District spending priorities. With my degree in Business and my professional career as a manager of a large sales force, I have experience with negotiating employment contracts, setting measurable goals, and managing budget expenditures.

If I were to only focus on one issue that is important to me, it would not be a true picture of how I would approach my responsibilities on the School Board. There are a number of key standards that I will uphold, if elected.

1) I will work to maintain the highest quality education for all students at an affordable price to taxpayers.

2) I will establish better avenues for open communication and transparency. This would include but is not limited to posting community questions and school board responses online.

3) I will gather community, student, teacher, and administrators’ input as well as the views of fellow school board members prior to making fiscal and educational decisions.

4) I will fight to eliminate Keystone exams as a graduation requirement.

With these standards in mind, the one “issue” that I will give extra focus to is the District’s spending priorities. Over the past several years, I have a track record of questioning the District’s spending – especially the $4 million maintenance building that was recently approved. I have questioned the need for security fencing that provides no real security and has an impact on homeowners whose properties are adjacent to our schools. With the help of others, I was able to stop the destruction of the VFE tennis courts, a valuable community resource, which in fact saved money and allows the PTO and School District to generate revenue through usage fees to outside organizations.

If elected, I will utilize my business background, my track record of questioning the District’s spending priorities, and my key standards as guiding principles to serve students, employees, and taxpayers of the Tredyffrin-Easttown School district.

For additional questions, please contact me at burger4sb@gmail.com or 484-254-6515.

TE School Board Candidate Kris Graham
Tredyffrin, East – Region 2

I, Kris Graham, have the privilege to currently serve as president of the Tredyffrin Easttown School District. I spent forty years as a classroom teacher. I am a wife and a mother of two adult sons – both Conestoga graduates. I treasure two grandchildren and my husband and I nurtured eleven foster children over a dozen years. They too benefitted from the TE schools. I have served for three and a half years on the T/E School Board chairing the Legislative and Education Committees, two years as vice-president, and led the Negotiation Team and the Superintendent Search Committee. My advanced degrees in education and teaching certificates in multiple areas enables me to work three mornings a week at a local school that serves at risk adolescents and maintain a private tutorial practice.

Ms. Benson invited me to submit an essay on one topic that I will concentrate on as an incumbent school board candidate. My campaign pledge comes directly from the TE School District mission statement crafted by TE stakeholders:

“To inspire a passion for learning, personal integrity, the pursuit of excellence and social responsibility in each student.”

I also commit to maintaining Conestoga among the elite high schools in the United States as recently recognized by BestColleges.com.

“Conestoga ranked number two overall (nationally) — trailing only Horace Greeley of Chappaqua, NY — (number one in Pennsylvania), 59th best in facilities (11th in the state), 19th in teaching faculty (third in the state) and the 54th safest high school in America (fourth safest in Pennsylvania).”

The survey compared 21,000 schools in the United States. I invite you to read the entire article, as well as all of the other achievements of our students and faculty, on Tredyffrin Easttown School District’s acclaimed website: www.TESD.org

I enjoy meeting you as I knock on doors, attend school functions and civic engagements. I look forward to working with this supportive community, sharing our TE pride, and continuing the TE legacy of academic excellence!

You can contact me via – krismgraham6@icloud.com

Thank you!

Kris Graham

TE School Board Candidate Ed Sweeney
Tredyffrin, East – Region 2

Dear Neighbor:

Pattye Benson has laid down a real challenge: state what is the one most pressing issue facing the school board and what are my qualifications to address it. Check out my Facebook EdSweeney4TE to review specific reform issues I am proposing in various areas, such as restoring applied technology and languages in elementary school, combating drug use, and using a more “user friendly” model for public comment.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Ed Sweeney and I am a local attorney who fights on the side of people like yourself. I will fight, effectively, for Tredyffrin’s interests and Region 2’s interests. My wife, Franny, and I have an 8 year old at VFES, Katie, and Franny volunteers regularly as a “library mom” and records the children singing. For 20 years, I have tried to develop my volunteer leadership skill sets to effectively and efficiently obtain results in areas including government, church (Saint Isaac’s), charitable, and political venues. This includes 15 years on volunteer Boards in Tredyffrin’s government, including Planning Commission and Zoning Hearing Board. I have fought vigorously as a political leader to keep Tredyffrin affordable and competitive, and against budget busting school taxes and the PIT and EIT.

Our focus needs to be keeping Tredyffrin affordable for middle class families while improving the already fine academic quality in the School District. We are not high priced Radnor. The mistake Radnor and other school districts have made is placing scarce resources in building schools or on administrative costs. We are drifting down a risky path of borrowing $24 million of capital without specific publicly articulated goals, installing expensive fences that bring little safety value, and a $4.8 million maintenance facility that is twice its forecast costs. I agree with the comment: “no one likes to see money spent on facilities and not the students.” The ability to make our total local tax obligations affordable makes Tredyffrin attractive to businesses which pay crucially important transfer taxes. Affordability also is a magnet for families that chose to settle here based on value.

Our philosophy should focus expenditures on students and teachers. We should treat our employees fairly. Transparency and effective public contribution help keep our system working well and is an important check on government.

Tredyffrin residents should also speak with one bipartisan voice on Pension Reform for new employees. The Pennsylvania School Board Association (PSBA’s) has urgently declared that “the system is unsustainable and must be fixed now.” I am in favor of a mixed system compromise as recently proposed.

Given the current dynamics of the Board, we need Directors who fight skillfully for Tredyffrin’s priorities both in public and “behind the scenes.” As a PC member, I opposed with success proposals harmful to homeowners such as trying to make residents put in sidewalks and expanding the definition of “historic building” to apply to even post war homes. Experience matters in a Board setting. I am dedicated to earning your support. Learn more about me on Facebook: EdSweeney4TE.

TE School Board Candidate Alan Yockey
Tredyffrin, East – Region 2

Hello. My name is Alan Yockey and I am a candidate for TESD School Board Director. I have spent 40 years in Information Technology as a programmer/analyst, business consultant, and IT Director. Before that I was a mathematics teacher. I know firsthand the rewards and frustrations of education. Now I am retired and have the time and experience to use serving our community on the school board. We moved to Tredyffrin in 1994 when our son was starting kindergarten at Hillside. He graduated from Conestoga in 2007. I know the schools are excellent, and I would like to serve our community to maintain that excellent quality.

The first priority of any school board director should be to maintain the high level of excellence in our district. I will approach this on several fronts.

  1. Insure our teachers get the training and support to make them excellent in the classroom. Monitor class size. Reduce constraints imposed on teachers from standardized testing. The number one objective for teachers should be opening minds and developing critical thinking. Not having high scores on multiple choice tests.
  2. Involvement of the Community-Whether in academics, finances, art and cultural, or sports the school board needs to lead the way in providing opportunities for parents and community members to be involved. Put more material on the web. Require committees to schedule meetings both during the day and in the evening. Have more workshops like the budget workshops which both provide information and allow for citizen input. Put questions, responses and supporting material for citizen questions on the web. Agendas items should be sufficiently clear so that interested parties can be easily identified.
  3. Students-Prepare students to be well rounded adults. Make sure all students are exposed to academics, music, art, manual skills, etc. The goal is to allow every student to find their area of interest and excellence. We cannot measure the success of the schools by counting the number of students who are National Merit Scholars.
  4. Finances-Work with the administration to balance our resources among the complex mandates and demands levied on the schools by government, by the community, by the students, and by the teachers. Use my 40 years of analytical experience to evaluate needs and costs. Think long term. Do not make decisions today which will hurt the quality of our schools in the future.

Producing “Well rounded adults or citizens” is a goal for our education system and for parents and for the community. For our education system to succeed at this goal we need school board members who take a holistic approach to the school system. As an IT Director I balanced end user demands, budget, IT and end user resources, training requirements, government regulations, safety concerns, and corporate goals to achieve an optimum solution. I will do the same on the school board.

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