New Minds = Fresh Thinking

• We are creative, outside of the box thinkers who are deeply rooted in the community and are willing to listen, learn and execute with the best interest of all parties.

• It is essential that school board members do not accept the status quo as "good enough" We are Upper Dublin, and we should strive to be the best, and help our students achieve their best. Just accepting things as they are, is not good enough. 

• We believe that raising taxes and relying on PA funding to support our budget while we go deeper in debt is not the best way to operate. We are prepared to take a hard look at our budget and make smart, long term decisions using our financial expertise.

• Currently, most school board votes are unanimous 9-0. This leaves us to believe there is a void of representation on the current board.

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Mindful and Sharp Budgeting

• Upper Dublin has increased taxes at a rate higher than any of the surrounding districts. While there was a referendum to increase taxes by 16% to build the high school, it does not account for the 79% increase in taxes we have seen over the last twenty years. While some districts have had slightly higher percentage increases than UD the dollar increase is higher as our base tax payments are much larger. We have had many years of increases when neighboring districts have not.  

• All $76 Million for the middle school project is borrowed. Our debt obligation we will be around $190 million dollars, the highest of all our neighboring Districts. The high level of debt cements the fact that we will have to keep raising taxes every year to keep up with debt payments. While other districts have curriculum as their second largest expenditure, behind teacher and staff pensions and salaries, Upper Dublin’s second largest expense is and will continue to be debt.

• CLICK HERE FOR MORE TAX INFO

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Respectful Board Members, Empathy and Listening

• There have been countless examples of the community having to rally and fight to try to redirect the board from unpopular decisions.

• The board often buries their heads into their computers, or whisper to one another while community members are speaking during their allotted 4 minutes at legislative meetings. They have been hiding behind Zoom meetings this past year, board members seem to ignore the community and lack empathy. 

• There have been many disrespectful and rude comments to community members during meetings, in emails and out in the community.

• Worse yet, taxpayers and residents get up to speak, and the board votes against the communities wishes. School board members are representatives of the community, ALL of the community!

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Open Communication & Full Transparency

• Residents often have to file multiple right to know forms to get answers on controversial topics. The board and the administration should be open and forthcoming. Many times, large decisions are put in to motion before they are even discussed publicly.

• We would like the chance to have open discussions and communicate with the community before decisions are made.

• We can not solve problems if we do not recognize they exist.

• The UD United Candidates have been dedicated in attending countless meetings to help address and even put a stop to some of the issues listed above. CLICK HERE to learn all about their prior advocacy.

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Investing in Initiatives that Make Sense

• We need honest assessments of what we currently have, before implementing something new. We need to be good at what we do, before we add more into our days. 

• Our district has been quick to buy into software pieces and programs that are expensive. We need to make sure we are making the right investments in new software in this ever-growing market. Our teachers are inundated with new products, platforms, and programs. We have multiple software programs...some used, some not being used. None have been assessed to see their success or failures. We would like to help improve the process and spending on such items.

• UD had implemented a new ELA program that eliminated phonics, and then a year later, had to buy back phonics. We now must spend additional dollars to triage students who lost out on those skills. We have bought transportation programs, only to toss them years later...we have launched multiple learning initiatives - only to abandon them a year or two later. 

 

Doing our Due Diligence

• One only has to look as far as the middle school project to see this in action. The district did not meet or seek proposals from any other engineering companies except for D'Huy Engineering. They did not properly vet all options for the facility, simply just took the word of the engineer, that a building could be achieved easily, for under $70 Million.

• We were at $76 million before we broke ground, and were in danger of losing the planetarium and the auxiliary gym.  More thorough exploration, above  and beyond stacked task force groups, should have been conducted.  

• What is next on the agenda? With aging elementary school built as far back as the 195os, we have to plan ahead and make smart decisions about budgeting for renovations or building new buildings. There are approximately $40 Million of capital improvements needed at the high school and the four elementary schools. 

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Closing the Achievement Gap

• The unknown effect of virtual education and lost opportunities for students who have been OUT of school for over a year is yet to be determined.  We need to honestly look back and honestly assess all that the students lost during this time and stay in tune and vigilant and provide the necessary supports. 

• Upper Dublin struggles when it comes to closing the achievement gap. We have implemented broad brush strokes to close it, only to fall short. We need to focus on more specialized opportunities and relief for families and students who fall into this gap.  Simply implementing new curriculum or policy will only widen the gap. Other districts have been able to close the gap more successfully. Why is that? We need real robust research on our students who fall in the gap, to learn how to best help them.

• We need a long-term achievement plan, that starts at the youngest levels. We have been directing our resources to the upper grades for too long. To triage, we need to strengthen our district from elementary school on up. We have seen the board vote and not hire reading specialists at our elementary level, and instead puts money in savings to cover debt financing.

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Following Through with Taskforces

• One of the biggest issues with school board assembled task forces is that the school board picks and chooses which recommendations to follow.

• The most egregious example was the Sandy Run Construction Project Task Force. The full recommendation was to build new but ONLY after the district had in place, a long-term capital projects plan as well as how to fund that plan. 

• After years of asking for a long-term capital project plan, and having already started the SRMS construction project, we are finally just getting to that plan now in 2021. 

• The four remaining buildings, which includes the high school, need over 40 million dollars’ worth of work and we still have no plan in place on how to fund these needed improvements. 

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Hiring The Best Teachers/Staff

• Are we attracting the best and brightest? What resources are we using? Are we exhausting all avenues to tap into a dwindling pool of candidates? Are we encouraging our own Upper Dublin students to aspire to be teachers? 

• Attracting great teachers is reflective of the reputation and culture of our school and leadership, not the location, the economic status of the students or even the pay.

• Working with great leadership like we have now in our superintendent, Dr. Yanni, we will be much more effective in supporting our teachers and create a school culture that teachers thrive!

• Working on things like improving our teacher mentor programs, make our teacher instructional support a priority and to better utilize our Parent-teacher organizations will insure that we attract the best teachers to Upper Dublin.

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Aspiring for High and Consistent Rankings

• While school rankings are not always the best judge of a school district, we must be mindful when they decline. The newest ranking equation is holding districts accountable for showing growth, particularly among subgroup categories.  While other districts have been able to show growth within these groups, Upper Dublin has not been as successful. We must ask ourselves why?

• Some view higher property taxes as a trade-off for top-notch school rankings. Unfortunately, UD's taxes are on the rise as some are seeing a better value in neighboring districts like Wissahickon who have lower taxes and better rankings. CLICK HERE to learn more about surrounding school taxes and rankings.

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Inspiring Learning

• Research shows that teachers (not technology, not buildings, and not even class size) are the single most powerful driver of student performance. This needs to be the guiding priority when we think about how to improve our schools. That being said, it would seem to put an enormous amount of pressure on teachers.

• Upper Dublin needs to better support our teachers. We must provide the kind of educational support that maintains our teacher's ability to continue to ignite passion in our students – inspiring them to be lifelong learners!

• Passionate teachers inspire innovative thinkers, setting students on a path to find their own passions in life. Our students and our teachers both deserve this. 

The Consent Decree

• The school district has systematically failed our students when it comes to equal access to our facilities. As a result, the district was sued, and now legally bound by an ADA decent decree.

• The district had known their middle school was not ADA compliant for decades. Instead of being good stewards for ALL students, they systematically chose to ignore the issues at our buildings. 

• Now, after hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, the district was ordered by the court to renovate their building, in order to make it ADA compliant, just to be torn down in a few years.

• CLICK HERE to download the Consent Decree. 

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