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Last year I ran for mayor of Monroe Township, as and Independent, hoping to be able to positively impact the lives of Monroe citizens by curtailing development, stopping the developers and specials services from running, and ruining our town, and by ending wasteful spending that only benefited local part-time politicians who receive pensions, stipends, and large health-care opt-out checks.
I previously served two terms on the Board of Education where, in my final year, we actually lowered taxes for the first time in 17 years. In addition to lowering taxes, we also brought the Board Attorney in-house, saving the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
I am running for the Board of Education as a parent of three children who attend schools in the district, and to bring a voice for parents, children, Teachers, and taxpayers back to the Board of Ed. The development continues and our schools are bursting at the seams. We need a commonsense approach to housing our children so that they get the education they need without the disruption of overcrowded class sizes that growth is bringing to the district.
We need to fight for funding. We currently “self-fund” our school district which means that taxpayers pay for the schools through property taxes. Because of an antiquated, broken and unfunded school funding formula, we pay 89% of a nearly 100 million school budget through our property taxes. That’s one reason why our property taxes are so high, and continue to grow.
- I believe that we need to group ourselves with similar districts that are being impacted by the funding disaster. pool resources and sue the state for our fair share of the funding.
- We need to ensure that our Teachers are allowed to teach and not just teach to tests.
- We must ensure that our children are taught, not just the basics, but then are given a path for success so that they can get into the best universities while also ensuring that students who wish to go into a trade or business are also shown a path that will lead them to be successful and productive citizens.
- We also need to take care of the students who need us most by ensuring that our special needs students are getting the instruction that their IEP’s require.
We need to ensure that our Board of Education is fiscally responsible while also understanding the need for great schools, which ensure great future generations and stable and rising property values. - I remain independent. We must not allow politics to encroach upon our schools and impact our student’s education. Our children should never be pawns in a political game. I fought against moving the election to November from April. I voted against it.I knew that moving the election would deny our citizens the right to vote on school budgets. School taxes are nearly 60% of our property tax burden. You have a right to vote on those budgets and to know what is in those budgets.
I also knew that moving the elections to November would make those elections partisan. That has come to fruition this year as the party in power is running a candidate for the Board of Ed. He served on the Planning Board and now is being run for the Board of Ed by the ruling party. As you drive around Monroe, just look at the sign locations for the local candidates and note the ones for Council which also have a Board of Ed candidate’s signs. That should not be allowed to happen. We do not need political parties using our children to further entrench their machines in order to enrich politicians, developers and specials services. Schools are for enriching the minds of our children.
Please vote for Ken Chiarella on November 8th.