School board contest Tuesday draws five contenders

By Nick Grabbe
Staff Writer

Published on March 19, 2010

Voters in Tuesday's Amherst town election can choose two candidates for School Committee from the five names that will appear on the ballot. Members of the Amherst School Committee, which supervises the elementary schools, also serve on the Regional School Committee, which deals with the middle and high schools.

The candidates are: incumbent Kathleen Anderson, who is running for re-election, Rob Spence, Vince O'Connor, Rick Hood and Ernie Dalkas.

School Committee member Andy Churchill is not seeking re-election.

Rob Spence

Rob Spence, of 16 Bayberry Lane, said the highest priority of the School Committee should be hiring an outstanding superintendent.

"Strong leadership is direly needed after the upheaval" of Alberto Rodriguez's departure, he said. "Demonstrated success in another high-performing district" should be a priority, he said.

Spence, 39, is an emergency room physician at Wing Memorial Hospital in Palmer and moved to Amherst in 2004. He has children in the public schools who are 4, 6 and 8.

Spence is not taking a position on the override. "I really think it's up to the voters to decide," he said.

In seeking to keep standards high with declining revenue, the Regional School Committee should emulate the Amherst committee's decision to close Mark's Meadow School and look for a similarly outside-the-box way to provide the same quality education at lower costs, he said.

Spence said the committee should "prioritize comparisons with other high-performing districts" and seek more internal reviews. He is a member of the board of advisors of Amherst Citizens for Excellence, which is committed to increasing academic rigor and challenge. He is also on the School Governance Council.

"As an emergency room physician, I make tough decisions every day," he said. "I do this using real-time data, knowledge of the best practices, clinical judgment and collaboration with the patients and their families. I feel that I can use these skills to help make good decisions for Amherst schools, as well."

Vince O'Connor

Vince O'Connor, a longtime community organizer who lives at 179 Summer St., has some outside-the-box ideas of his own for how the public schools should operate.

O'Connor, 68, believes that Mark's Meadow School should be kept open until Fort River and Wildwood Schools have been renovated. The open layout of these 40-year-old schools is inconsistent with current teaching patterns, he said. He opposed the closing of Mark's Meadow and believes much of the claimed savings are illusory, he said.

O'Connor supports the override but would have preferred one that gave voters the option of choosing which parts of town government to support. He's willing to see class size increase for electives but not for the core curriculum, and he opposes starting new programs such as preschools.

The elementary schools could save money by eliminating the assistant principals and operating more collaboratively, he said. "Hierarchies need more administrators," he said.

On the secondary level, the School Committee should look at cutting administrators, not electives, he said.

O'Connor, a 36-year resident of Amherst, said he hopes to push for the University of Massachusetts and the colleges to provide more support to the town and the schools.

He supports the decision to wait before looking for a new superintendent, and doubts that any candidate would respond to a search in Amherst for the next nine months.

Rick Hood

Rick Hood's top priorities are communication, cooperation between parents, teachers and administrators, financial transparency, and analysis of costs and efficiencies, he said.

Hood, 52, is self-employed in Web site development and graphic design. He lives at 48 Farmington Road and has children who are 23 and 21 and went to Amherst Regional High School. He moved to Amherst in 2001.

He has supported the override but said he also favors changes in the schools. He said he was impressed with the critical report last week on the Regional Middle School from consultant Barry Beers.

"When we say we want an outside audit, school employees think it's going to tell you how we're doing things wrong, rather than how will it help me do my job better," he said. "We need help to do things better."

Hood said he wants to make sure Amherst's next superintendent is a good manager of people. "I'd rather have a really good manager who knows less about education than someone who knows about education but is a lousy manager," he said. "He or she should be no-nonsense, straight-ahead and focus on children and not extraneous stuff."

Hood has been chairman of the ARHS Parent Center and is a board member of the Amherst Education Foundation. He has done Web design work for the Amherst public schools, the foundation, the parent center and the middle school's Family School Partnership. He's a member of the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee.

Ernie Dalkas

Ernie Dalkas said he "doesn't like the direction the schools are going" in terms of budget cuts, especially cuts to intervention programs on the elementary level.

Dalkas, 61, is a disabled veteran of the Vietnam War who grew up in a working-class family in Holyoke, he said. He lives at 170 East Hadley Road and has children in the public schools who are 15 and 9. He's been on the Crocker Farm Governance Council for six years.

He supports the override. He said Rodriguez was "doing a good job," and called Interim Superintendent Maria Geryk "a good leader."

He said he wouldn't rule out an internal search for a new superintendent, and the School Committee should look for "someone who will take charge and be an administrator. We need a strong leader who will advocate for kids."

Dalkas has been attending School Committee meetings for three years and is a member of the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee. "My philosophy is to put children first," he said.

He said the committee has been micromanaging too much. "The responsibility of the School Committee is to pass a budget that meets the educational needs of our children," he said. He said the existence of two study halls at the high school is evidence that the budget has not met those needs.

Dalkas said to wants to hear what townspeople have to say. "I feel I have a strong ability to listen," he said. "I've bridged the gap in many areas of my life."

Kathleen Anderson

Incumbent Kathleen Anderson said she "represents a voice that is often silent in our community."

Anderson often speaks up at School Committee meetings on behalf of marginalized students. "It is important that we as a community hold fast to our goals of equity and excellence, and for that we need multiple voices and perspectives," she said.

"If we exclude from the board different perspectives, then we cheat our students and our community out of those kinds of values."

Anderson, 58, lives at 19 Deepwoods Drive and is an educator and artist. She has lived in Amherst mostly since 1974. She has five grandchildren 10 and under, one of whom attends the elementary schools and another of whom will soon.