Mike Boone, Line 2D
Website
Facebook
Instagram
COMMON QUESTIONS
Q: What does the phrase “parental rights” mean to you and what should the role of parents be in public school education?
Mike Boone: I worry that the phrase “parental rights” is a loaded term brought on by a national political viewpoint that I worry is trying to have an outsized influence on our school system. I’m going to define what I think parental rights translates to. But the challenge is that speaking against that phrase makes it look like you are anti-parent and I want to be clear that I am not. I am very much supportive of parental concerns, and I hear parents. To answer the second part of your question first, I see parents as partners in the educational process. Everything we’re going to be doing through our school system needs to be centered on the students and we can’t do that without parents being involved and engaged in our journey. Now why I worry that the phrase parental rights is a politically loaded term is that it is trying to work at the local level to steer away schools from the state guidance on their curriculums. And I know that couple of communities took an agenda from parental rights groups to change student privacy notifications. The laws at the state level require the students to be protected and how they identify is supposed to be private between the student and the school. By releasing that information, it puts the students at risk. And that’s one thing that does concern me. I think students’ safety and student mental health is paramount. And it’s not to say that this is in any way shape or form against parents or families. These laws are in place to protect the students and I feel that parental rights groups, while advocating for the parents, unfortunately, put the students at risk.
Q: What should the BOE be doing to support LGBTQ+ students?
Mike Boone: We have roughly 2,000 students in the Verona schools. If we are to assign general percentages across the nation, that means that approximately one in five of those students are going to identify in the LGBTQ community. High school and junior high is extremely stressful and anxiety is at an all time high. When students are trying to figure out who they are, it adds to that anxiety level. Verona schools need to underscore the fact that as these students are learning who they are, this is a normal process. I feel that, as part of the strategic objective, this would come under the goal area number three, which is social-emotional learning, DEI and belonging. It is baked in to what Verona schools are aiming to do. We have to communicate loudly and clearly that these students that are finding out who they are in their journey, that they are in a safe place, that they can be free to be who they are and celebrated or for how they identify. It has to be welcoming. It also has to mean we have to make it clear that there’s nothing wrong with them. I mean, one in five people across the country identify in LGBTQ communities, and so that it is perfectly normal and we as a school community, have to make them feel every bit as part of that journey. And if any student feels like there’s something wrong with them, it adds to their anxiety and it puts them at risk, whether that’s through how they relate with their families or whether it’s through how they relate with their communities and themselves. We have to celebrate everybody and hear the challenges that they face in their journeys and let them know that we’re there for them.
Q: The BOE is the most demanding community position in Verona, often requiring upwards of over 10 hours per week of unpaid time from its members. What in your current job roles and responsibilities might prevent you from fully carrying out your duties on the BOE? How will you find time to commit fully to the work of the Board?
Mike Boone: One of the biggest challenges of deciding to run is to recognize the support from our employer, and I made it very clear with my team and those to whom I report, that I am very much interested in being involved in my community school system through a Board of Education position. I have 100% support from my teammates at work and from my organization. My job is demanding but fortunately it is a hybrid role where I spend a large amount of time working from my home in Verona. The demands on my time for travel are limited and come with enough advance notice that I am able to navigate those scheduling demands. So it’s a very long way of me saying that I do not anticipate any job-related challenges that would prevent me from being involved, and the fact that my two children are now off at college, I am less involved in some of the programs that they are involved in or that they had been involved in. So I feel, ironically, that I have probably the most flexibility in my schedule now than I ever had before.
Q: Verona limited in-person learning during the COVID pandemic. That kept infections and deaths low but there were learning losses. What did you learn from the experience and how would you approach the next public health crisis?
Mike Boone: Oh God, I hope we don’t have another public health crisis. I don’t want to re-litigate the past, for sure. I think that we can all agree that the experiences at the height of the pandemic were far from perfect, but there were learnings and there were pockets of success in how we adapted to remote learning. I would love to keep in mind with our school leaders where we thought things worked and look on how we can build from our successes. We also need to recognize what didn’t work, what the challenges were, particularly at the younger levels with reading programs. We need to make sure that we don’t fall into the same missteps that we did before. And, look, no crisis is going to be the same. It’s also important that we do work with our partners at the state level for guidance. In defense of the state of New Jersey, I think they did the best of what they could do with what they knew at that time. I think that by a careful analysis of what went right and what went wrong in the past, we have learnings that we can apply if, God forbid, there should be another crisis.
CANDIDATE-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS
Q: On your campaign website, you say Verona schools need to have to plan for growth in the student population. Given what you learned at Tuesday’s Board of Ed meeting, what would you put in the plan?
Mike Boone: I think the one of the questions I had about the presentation we saw was that there was a projection throughout the Verona schools of about approximately 100 new students over the course of the next five years. Far be it for me to question the findings of the experts involved; they were very impressive and their expertise in data science is top level. I have questions tied to their findings: Did they account for economic conditions that could draw a higher number of families into the new housing, particularly in the Cameco site? I worry that the models that they use might lead to a bit of an undercount. So if they are telling us 100, I would really, really want us to plan for close to 200. I know that might be an extreme number, but I would rather be wrong in that direction as opposed to wrong in the lower end. I think we also need to recognize that this isn’t just a Verona schools problem or a challenge. This is going to be a challenge for the town of Verona and we need to have very frank and clear discussions with our town leaders on the costs that any expansion is going to need or any increase in mobility among the schools. The presentation talked about how we are going to be well over capacity at F.N. Brown, whereas we have other schools that are going to be under capacity. This creates a logistics issue on getting the students to places where we are meeting those capacity standards. We need to investigate what those options are before we can put anything into the plan. There are a lot of conversations that we have to have with our school leaders as well as our town leaders before we can figure out what the best plan of action is.
Q: You say that student and staff morale is low in Verona. If you are elected, you would be on the Board of Ed and not the superintendent or a school administrator. So how could you improve morale?
Mike Boone: It’s important to recognize that the role of the school board is to ensure that our superintendent has the tools that she needs to put her administrators and her teachers in the best position to do their jobs, which would then find their way to successful student outcomes. Again, everything that is in the strategic plan appears to me to put students at the center of that journey. So our job as school board is to make sure that the superintendent and their administrators are adhering to the goals that they have set out in that strategic plan. And support them in any way we can. Part of that is going to be through accountability. I think our superintendent is doing a fabulous job of making clear what she expects from her administrators. And I think that that is putting them on the proper path. It’s going to involve constant communication with the superintendent and through transparency between the board and the superintendent that those goals and objectives are being met.
One of the other things that does affect morale is teacher turnover. That tells me that teachers, for whatever reason, feel like they are not able to achieve the success that they want to make. I think that the superintendent recognizes that and I think that we need to make sure that we are giving her the support that allows the teachers to do their jobs. This kind of comes back to your earlier question on the parental rights groups. I worry that traction with the parent rights groups risks continuity between the superintendent and the teachers, and we must make sure that outside interference does not get in the way of the superintendent and the teachers doing their jobs.
Q: When you talk about special education, you say that it’s hard for parents and families to navigate the system and that we need to develop a more family-friendly system that helps parents cut through the red tape. What would a more family-friendly system look like and how would it be implemented?
Mike Boone: From my personal experience, to get some of the services–and they were not significant services, but they were important–I felt that we as a family had to work real hard to find out what we were entitled to. Now, I think with [Director of Special Services] Tania Symmons, we are heading down a path where that communication from the administration to families is going to become better. Again, it comes down to the strategic plan, where we’re talking about improving student outcomes and achievement, as well as the social emotional learning, which is goal area three. I think our director of special services is going to be working under these goal areas to make sure that there is a level of communication between the schools and the parents. It is not my role to tell them how they are going to do that. But again, through communication with our leadership, I think we will be able to encourage and make sure that there is going to be a level of communication between parents and the administration that lets parents know what they can do to put their children in the best position to succeed and it’s through those programs that they will be able to work toward positive outcomes.
Q: What about your own education would you change and why?
Mike Boone: You know, that’s hard. That might be the hardest question you’ve asked because ultimately, my career has led me to this wonderful place in Verona. So once you start going back in time and thinking, well, maybe I should do something different, it wouldn’t lead me to where I am now.
As a student back in high school, it just felt like you do one task and you’re done. The learning experience was over. I think I didn’t learn until I got into graduate school in my late 20s that life is an ongoing level of education, and that everything you learn has a relationship to something else. What I mean by that is I’m envious. Looking at both of my children and their experiences that they had in Verona schools. My youngest had a love of the physical sciences but didn’t particularly love eighth and ninth grade math and didn’t understand the importance of math to the physical sciences. But through the engineering, STEM and physics programs, Verona teachers recognized he had a love for this and showed him how math would allow him to succeed in physics or engineering. Once he saw how math related to physics, his physics continued to do well, but his math went through the roof. He saw why math mattered.
And so coming back to your question, I feel like I did not learn in high school that life was a constant series of educational opportunities. I learned that much later in life. And I didn’t learn in high school how to make connections, how what I do in my English class could relate to my history class and could relate to my current events. I am very envious that my children had the opportunity to do so because of some very strong teachers; they saw those connections and I think that that is a gift in and of itself.
Now that my children are in college I see them thriving because they had that very strong foundation from Verona schools. So that I think is another thing that we on the school board can do–we can foster an excitement of learning. This is gonna sound really corny, but learning can be fun once you start making those practical applications. In the middle of COVID, when George Floyd was murdered, my youngest just so happened to be reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” They immediately saw in real time the relationship and the lessons that they learned from “To Kill a Mockingbird” to the murder of George Floyd. You don’t always get those kinds of opportunities to learn in real time from something that was written more than a half a century ago. That’s, to me, the excitement of education and I think, at the end of the day, that’s really the role of the school board to be excited, and celebrate those pockets of success and learn how to build from them.