Mental health, safety are top issues for Wyckoff school board candidates

WYCKOFF — Student mental health and safety are top priorities for the "Serving Our Students" slate of candidates running for three seats on the borough's K-8 Board of Education on Nov. 8.

Joseph Kiely, Lisa Ann Michaels and Rachel Schulties responded to The Record's request for information. Their opponents, incumbent Louis Cicerchia, Juan Molina and James Schappert running on the "Reading, Writing, Arithmetic" slogan, did not return the information surveys.

Incumbents Daniel McHugh and Timothy Murtha are not seeking new terms.

The candidates represent diverse professional backgrounds. Kiely is a teacher, Michaels is a pediatrician, and Schulties is the chief operating officer of a marketing company. All three have children attending the township's public schools.

There is no mention by the three candidates of the partisan politics that continue to pervade this year's nonpartisan races for what are supposed to be autonomous seats on the grade and high school boards. Instead, their responses are focused on return-to-the-classroom issues:

On the issue of mental health, all three candidates said they recognize the impact of COVID isolation on students, and the need to address "the rapid increase in child and teen anxiety, depression and suicide," according to Michaels.

"Kids today face challenges that we did not during our formative years," Schulties said. "This has resulted in an increase in the need for social and emotional support within our school system. I am committed to ensuring our schools teach our children acceptance and tolerance."

As far as safety, Schulties called for a "thorough security analysis" and Kiely an evaluation of "the district's safety protocol and systems."

"Evaluate what can or needs to be done to improve the safety of our schools, knowing that students learn best when they are in a safe, secure environment," Michaels said.

When it comes to fiscal responsibility, Wyckoff's grade school ranks 28th among 78 Bergen County school districts with a cost per pupil of $18,247, according to the state Department of Education. The candidates recognize voters have their eye on the cost of schools in their property taxes.

"We have a responsibility to use taxpayer dollars for evidence-based practices in the best interest of students' educational development," Kiely said.

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Schulties said she supports budget planning "that is both fiscally responsible and competitive in nature."

"We must consistently tie performance and outcomes to every dollar spent," Schulties said. "Each dollar we spend must have a clear outcome or result that benefits the students."

The three candidates also said they support following state guidelines on masking and vaccines, as well as the new state guidelines on health and sex education.

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"There are a lot of shocking rumors circulating locally about what exactly is included in the curriculum," Michaels said. "In reading the curriculum myself, I feel the lessons are age appropriate and not as explicit as many have been made to believe."

As far as in-person or remote learning, each district determined when classes would be held in-person or remotely in conference with the municipality's board of health during the pandemic. The Wyckoff district "smartly made decisions to follow health department guidelines and protocols," Kiely said.

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"We were among the first districts to return to in-person school," Michaels said. "Overall, I feel the best choices were made to balance our children's educational and mental health needs with their physical safety."

Schulties said students "had a favorable experience through the pandemic relative to other districts," and that "communication from the administration was clear and timely."

Wyckoff's seven-member grade school board serves 1,932 students in five buildings.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Mental health, safety top issues for Wyckoff school board candidates