Meet the Ossining School Board Candidates

Three candidates are seeking to fill two vacant seats on the Ossining School Board by earning your votes on Tuesday, May 21.

Current Board President Bill Kress and newcomers Lisa Murray and Carlos Desmaras previously announced their intent to run.

On Tuesday, voters will also weigh in on the board of education's adopted $110.433 million proposed 2013-14 academic year budget.

Here is some background on each candidate:

Carlos DesmarasAge: 51
Occupation: Public Finance Banker 
Number of years living in Ossining: 9 years
Number of children in district: 3 boys in third grade
Number of years on board (if incumbent): 0
Examples of community involvement: one year soccer coach (Ossining AYSO), former member of the Town of Ossining Citizens Finance Advisory Committee

Bill KressAge: 52
Occupation: Retired Patrol Sergeant, Ossining PD
Number of years living in Ossining: lived and/or worked here my entire life
Number of children in district: 2
Number of years on board (if incumbent): 6
Examples of community involvement: Ossining Rotary Club 2005-present, Ossining MATTERS Board 2006-2012, Ossining Communities that Care 2009-present

Lisa MurrayAge: 45
Occupation: Financial Services
Number of years living in Ossining: 13
Number of children in district: 3
Number of years on board (if incumbent): N/A
Examples of community involvement: Current Vice President of SEPTO

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Patch: Why are you running for school board this year?
Murray: I am running for the school board this year because I believe my many years of work experience can be a great asset to our district as we continue to navigate the difficult financial hurdles that we are all faced with.
Kress: I feel I have made a positive impact on the district during my tenure. Along with my fellow board members, I have supported excellent programs that have benefitted our students and community.
Desmaras: Parents and taxpayers need more people like me on the Board. I believe the Board needs to be more focused, for example it should have just two goals as opposed to five. Those two goals should be instructional excellence and affordability so that excellence can endure. The goals should be ambitious but attainable within a three to five year period and they need to be clearly defined and have data driven metrics that measure performance and progress towards those goals as opposed to the current soft goals like “positive student achievement for all.” I believe the district has a historic opportunity to achieve these two goals as many of its teachers will soon be retiring and many new teachers will need to be recruited. Making sure that our teachers are high performing as opposed to average or low performing will make all the difference in the educational outcomes of our children as the “quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”

Patch: Can you discuss your thoughts on this year’s proposed budget? Will you be voting in favor of the budget? Why or why not?
Murray: I believe this year’s budget is fiscally responsible and although there are some cuts, the district is still able to maintain important programs and favorable class sizes. I believe these cuts have been kept as far away from the classroom as possible and I will be voting in favor of this budget.
Kress: The board began discussing the budget early and very publicly. I feel this is an extremely responsible budget that preserves many of the programs we value while respecting the fiscal situation we are living in.
Desmaras: The budget is truly large, the OUFSD will spend close to $110 million dollars next year. When we spend $110 million we can demand and we have a duty to our children and families to demand nothing but the best value for our money. I believe the board has to re-think its approach to budgeting. Future budgets should employ a zero-based budgeting approach instead of the incremental budgeting we have in place that assumes the base-line (the prior year’s budget) is automatically approved. Zero-based budgeting requires a thorough review and the base line is zero. This more thorough approach can help ensure that every dollar spent will move us closer to our goals of instructional excellence. This approach will lead to resources being allocated to activities that move us forward in a cost effective manner and will reduce resource allocations to activities that are less cost effective. And unlike the current approach, it requires defined goals and metrics that are established through an open process and permits community oversight.

Patch: What do you think the long-term impacts of the state’s “tax cap” will be on the Ossining schools?
Murray: Although I understand why the tax levy limits were put in place, I believe without mandate reliefs, it adds a level of financial difficulty during these strained economic times. I am concerned that our district can only cut so far before we begin eroding quality programs.
Kress: I feel that the district has worked hard to look forward and be proactive. I think we will need to go to Albany and work to get changes made to the tax cap legislation and to get relief from unfunded mandates. I think that our legislators did not anticipate some of the consequences of the tax cap and have put all of the school districts in New York State at risk.
Desmaras: The Tax Cap sets temporary limits on property tax increases that can be raised by local voters and even provides certain exceptions and carryovers that permit districts to exceed the cap in any one year. The cap passed with bipartisan support indicating state voters believe that not only is the rent too high but taxes are too high as well. Ossining has not been able to achieve the dual goals of educational excellence and a sustainable tax burden. I would also add that if excellence is not achieved in a sustainable fashion it will not endure. That our school district’s budget is on an unsustainable path is clear; it is growing faster than inflation, faster than disposable incomes, and faster than home values. By any measure of affordability we chose to measure it by, our $110 million school budget is unaffordable. And even though we spend $110 million per year our district’s educational attainment is average. The school board likes to point to anecdotal pockets of excellence (Intel Science awards, and a recent music award) as proof that something is going right. Yet data driven objective measures of performance demonstrate that the school district is at best an average performer. I believe a community that spends $110 million can demand and obtain excellence from its school district. Large and small districts across the country are achieving stunning improvements in educational attainment (for example Boston improved its state test scores for English by 34 percent and its Math scores by 49 percent in just six years!). These districts achieved these results by focusing on recruiting and mentoring high performing teachers and as a result have achieved these improvements without draining its taxpayers’ savings and pushing members of our community to move away. I find it difficult to accept that many of the board members that speak about the importance of community are the same that impose burdensome taxes on that community. These high taxes contribute to our high foreclosure rate, and force many seniors and middle class families to move away from our community. Our taxes are so high that they literally break up families and separate friends. And yet for discussing taxes and affordability a candidate is charged with not caring for the community or the quality of instruction. Frankly, it is the very opposite, for our community to be healthy and for community values to endure our taxes need to be made affordable.One area that has been left out of our electoral discussion is the lack of financial oversight by the board. The board unlike 44% of the districts in New York provides other post employment benefits (“OPEB”) these include retiree healthcare benefits, life insurance, dental and vision. OPEB benefits are different and separate from Social Security, Pension Benefits, and Medicare. The cost of these OPEB benefits are enormous and are now coming home to roost. Most voters are unaware that buried in the notes to the district’s financial statements is our OPEB liability, a mind blowing $102 million! Moreover, the experts that establish this estimate employ assumptions that definitely understate the costs of those benefits. Nevertheless, the cost is already over $102 million dollars! To put it simply the board has agreed to fork over $102 million dollars and has failed to have a conversation with voters on the magnitude of this liability and has incurred the liability without voter approval. And this liability covers generous benefits to retired teachers who because they are retired have no impact on the quality of instruction. Sadly, I believe I am the only candidate to the board that has even mentioned this $102 million issue. In my response to the last question I lay out some of my ideas to achieve educational excellence in a cost effective manner as I believe the large number of teacher retirements in our district will provide us with a historic opportunity to move from average to great and to do so in a way we can all afford.

Patch: Did you vote in favor of the transportation proposal? Why or why not?
Murray: I did not vote in favor of the transportation proposal as I believe that we need to get our children to school safely.
Kress: Yes. I felt that the community would work together to get our children to school. The savings, about 412k, could have been used to restore some of the cuts to programs. However, the community supported maintaining the current mileage limits.
Desmaras: I voted against the board proposal and believe that the proposal and voter rejection of the same prove that the board chose not to address the key drivers of rising costs in a business-like fashion but instead attempted to trim around the edges. In the end the board’s approach only delays and increases the size of the adjustments that will be required in the future. In addition the voter rejection of the unanimous board proposal demonstrates that the board has a limited understanding that most of our families have two bread winners and that cutting back on transportation imposes a high burden on them. The board appears willing to impose a burden on many of our families but they do not appear willing to address the central issue that would result in difficult but needed changes to the structure and provisions of our collective bargaining agreement, the core driver of district expenses. The collective bargaining agreement accounts for over 77% of total district expenses, we cannot achieve sustainability without addressing this “line item.” The approach to cutting transportation costs also suggests a lack of thinking about the underlying cost drivers and an inability to consider costs in a 360 business-like fashion. Below I provide some ideas that can be looked into before asking for additional sacrifices from our families.
Procurement process: Does our procurement process obtain sufficient bids from bus companies, or is competition limited and as a result costs are likely to be high? Is the Request For Proposal well distributed or do we limit ourselves to a legal minimum? Does the district’s procurement officer reach out to companies to interest them in bidding? Does the procurement officer track who receives a proposal and whether they respond and then follow-up with non-respondents to determine why they chose not to respond?
Proposal requirements: Why are few companies responding? Is the time provided for preparing a response to short? Are the required forms too time consuming? What are the bidder or proposal requirements that drive firms to not bid? One aspect of our current transportation scheme that has always seemed odd to me is the just in time nature of our approach. Students (at least in the early grades, my three kids are in third grade) must be delivered to schools within a very tight window of time. Such an approach does two things: 1) it increases the size of the required bus fleet, and 2) increases the amount of time that children spend on the bus breathing diesel fumes. A longer delivery window would result in a smaller required bus fleet and improve our kids’ quality of life. However, costs savings related to a smaller fleet will be offset to a degree by the added costs of opening the schools earlier and monitoring kids during that time. I don’t know if the savings are fully offset by the costs, but more importantly neither does the board and they should know before asking families to make a sacrifice. I would like to add that in my view many of the added costs could actually be mitigated and that additional time at school could serve as an opportunity to provide children with added mentoring. Perhaps some of our high school students could provide some of that mentoring reducing our costs and at the same time improving those high school students’ attractiveness to colleges. Due to my business and financial background I am accustomed to looking long and hard and evaluating tradeoffs and can help the board more fully evaluate these problems.

Patch: Describe the quality of the education you believe students are getting in Ossining. Are there measures you would take to improve upon it?
Murray: I believe there is a high quality of education in Ossining and I am always impressed especially with our Ossining High School students and how well they speak and carry themselves. I am very proud of the student’s achievements this year and believe they will have bright futures. My main concern is with the common core standards and excessive testing eating away at authentic learning. While the common core standards will bring more rigorous curriculum to the classroom, it is known to be developmentally inappropriate for some grades and it does not necessarily have proven positive outcomes. And with the standardized test, our students are now sitting and taking tests for eighteen hours and those hours can be used for learning and practicing critical thinking skills through classroom instruction.
Kress: Our students are receiving a world class education that respects their needs and the diverse population we serve. I will continue to support innovations that improve the student experience and allow them to become productive citizens as they move on.
Desmaras: The right answer is we do not know because we lack an agreement on how to measure educational attainment. Worse yet because the board has unanimously rejected the use of statewide objective measures we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot improve because one cannot improve what one does not measure. The board’s reactionary decision to come out swinging against standardized testing calling it inhuman and inaccurate flies in the face of: 1) dozens of studies that document the need for national standards and objective testing, 2) hundreds of studies that indicate that there is no better objective measure of future educational success than institutionalized standardized tests, and finally 3) reality, the college options our kids will have in the future will depend on how well they do on a single test. They need to be able to test well and practicing once a year is certainly going to help. It is amazing that our board choses to disagree with our nation’s colleges that heavily weigh standardized test scores when attempting to discern a student’s educational attainment and their ability to perform at a college level. Not only does the board reject testing it does not provide a workable cost effective alternative. A strident “I am against it!” with no workable alternative does not demonstrate educational leadership on their part. We need to establish benchmarks and clear milestones and hold our administrators and teachers accountable for achieving them. Possible benchmarks and milestones can include the following (I limited this list to junior and senior high school students due to space limitations): Establish goals for actual scores and multi-year trends in scores and compare these to our local, national and yes global benchmarks, for example:

• Average and quartile break outs of SAT, regents and other objective scores broken out by subject matter, class, and classroom.
• Consider international standards of achievement and benchmarking ourselves against the schools we aspire to top.
• Number of students from each class taking the SAT, and other college examinations,
• Number of students applying to different types of colleges. Help answer the question: “Do our students have the desire and confidence in themselves to apply to highly competitive schools?”
• A distribution of the colleges our kids were accepted into and also those that they chose to attend. And not the anecdotal list of schools currently put out by the board that lists schools without indicating whether the same kid was accepted into one, two three or more of these schools.
• Our district’s average AP scores, the number of AP test takers, the distribution of those scores among test takers.
• Drop out rates in high school and if possible college.

• They hire the right people to be teachers.
  
• They develop teachers into high performing teachers.
• They put in place processes to ensure each child fully benefits from the excellent education provided.

• Focus recruitment on the region’s and nation’s top teaching colleges;
• identify candidates with high literacy and numeracy skills (GPA, SATs, etc and employ cut-off scores), and
• tests and interview questions that help evaluate a commitment to teaching and high work quality.