Six candidates vie for three seats on Bloomfield BOE

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — At the Bloomfield Public Library on Saturday, Oct. 26, the Independent Press interviewed six of the seven Bloomfield Board of Education candidates competing for three open seats in next week’s election. One candidate was unable to attend due to health reasons. The interviews were undertaken to help determine the three candidates this newspaper would endorse. All board seats are for three years. The responses below are in the order the candidates were interviewed: slated candidates Emily Smith and Lillian Mancheno, Ben Morse, Jill Fischman, Satenik Margaryan and Dan Anderson. Absent was Laura Izurieta, who is slated with Smith and Mancheno. Mancheno, Morse and Fischman are incumbents.

Mancheno said, from her own experience as an immigrant, she understood that non-English speaking students required more assistance and that programs should be developed for students not bound for college. Smith also said more vocational programs are necessary, and that funding is a state responsibility. Both candidates believed sixth-graders should be moved from the elementary school, and Smith said it has to be determined whether it is more cost effective to put them into the present middle school or into a proposed middle school in the current vocational school on Franklin Street, a county property that is expected to be vacated in two years.

“I don’t understand why a public entity had to buy a public building from another public entity,” Smith said. “They’re essentially trading properties.”
Regarding the impasse in contract negotiations with the teachers, Mancheno said she belongs to a union and wanted what was best for the teachers. Smith said she understands the teachers had a proposal that was turned down by the board, but acknowledged that information was one-sided since the teachers are talking but the board is not.

Morse said interventions and after-school programs are needed to address students’ poor results on standardized Algebra I tests, saying he thinks part of the problem was that the book did not align with the test.

He said the vo-tech school should be purchased and used for students in grades six to eight.
“It’s basically a reform movement,” he said. “There would be two middle schools and they would be magnet schools so there would be no north and south division.”

Morse said he expects the school population to increase due to local development.
“If the state makes pre-K mandatory, we’d be stuck,” he said. “The board has to communicate better with the public because of population concerns. There has to be a buy-in from the community on this.”

Regarding teachers contracts, he said a correction to the salary guide is necessary, although he is not privy to negotiations.
“On the ground, teachers are saying ‘yes’ to the district at the beginning of summer and waiting for other job offers and we’re left scrambling, looking for teachers from what’s left,” he said.

Fischman said the Bloomfield School District does not like standardized tests.
“PARCC hasn’t given us a test and shown us the validity of it,” she said. “Every year they’re changing their criteria.”
She is of the opinion that the board and teachers union are bargaining in good faith, saying, “We attract good, young teachers, but the salary guide at the beginning is low. We’d like to keep more of these people in-house.”

Fischman said there is a nationwide trend to put sixth-graders into middle schools. Asked what would happen to the trend toward “social-emotional learning” and using sixth-graders as peer proponents, she said, “I would like to say that fifth-graders can handle the SEL responsibilities of the sixth-graders.”
Regarding what to do with the vocational school on Franklin Street when it becomes available, Fischman said community input is necessary. As for students who are not college bound, she said several Bloomfield students are trade apprentices at a facility in Edison.

Fischman, who currently serves on the board, spends about 10 hours per week doing board work, and said, “If you want to do it right, it takes a lot of time. I prefer working behind the scenes rather than two hours in front of the camera.”
Fischman said the board is “firing on all cylinders” but it is unfortunate that elections are happening now since new members may be joining the board.
“You have to stay tuned to 6,400 kids and 1,000 staff members,” she said.
Margaryan said the achievement gap is a result of accumulated disadvantages; she would like to see universal pre-K in Bloomfield, but acknowledges that it will not be inexpensive or come overnight. Children who attend pre-K come to kindergarten knowing letters and some arithmetic, she said, adding that this “will affect high school test scores. It levels the playing field at the most important time.”

She said she “would like to see major changes in Bloomfield,” and gave as an example making Fairview Elementary only for second- and third-graders to provide for more student integration.

“The neighborhood school model would go away,” she said. “Getting rid of neighborhood schools would provide a more targeted approach to education and social emotional learning would not be compromised.”
Margaryan said she is against Bloomfield having two middle schools unless they are magnet schools, saying, “I don’t want north-south middle schools. It would entrench the segregation.”

She also noted that she is part of the parental group opposed to armed guards in school lobbies.
“I’m a criminologist,” she said. “I studied this. Having armed guards would create many more problems.”

She would also like to see more Bloomfield teachers living in town, which “will affect student performance.” She thinks this would be possible if the teachers were paid more.

Anderson said he is not overly concerned with the high school results for Algebra I because the results were not good across the state.
“I’d like to see local districts determine how successful their kids will be,” he said. “I believe in more project-based and portfolio assessments. We’re ripe to do it, but the specter of the ‘big test’ is in the background.”

He does not think there is a need for an exit exam for high school seniors and would like to see more restorative justice in school, referring to student reconciliation between the victim and accused.

Anderson said he was “not sold on north and south middle schools, possibly if they were magnet schools,” but said funding for busing would be required, adding that “the reality is that the south end is different from the north end socially and economically.”
He said the school board and teacher’s union are at an impasse because of the low salary rate and that the Bloomfield School District is a training ground for teachers who move on to other school districts.

“We have to do something about the salary guide,” he said. “My approach is to work on the salary guide first.”
On the issue of election timing, Anderson said elections should not return to April; and regarding the district budget, he said it should go to cap.
On Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, Bloomfield residents will be asked to cast their ballots for three candidates for the Bloomfield Board of Education.