i'd like to welcome lisa anderson who is another candidate for the future township school directors welcome lee so thank you for being here thank you for having me i'd like to start by asking you what particular strengths or qualifications do you bring to the role of school director or would you bring well for the past twelve years i have been very involved in the school district very involved in the p t a i have an eleventh grader and an eighth grader and since my eleventh grader was in kindergarten i became very involved in the p t a i've served a period of ten years on a p t a board three of them as president and during that p t a activity it's loud me to get to know four out of the five buildings in the district the administrators in those buildings the central administrators the teachers the curriculum the policies the procedures all of those things i think are important for a school board member to know i also for the past few years have attended almost all the school board meetings and all the committee meetings so i understand what the obligations are of a school board member how they've run the school board and what the issues are that they deal with and lastly i am an attorney i worked and practiced for ten years i worked in a large law firm and during that job i had to analyze complex legal issues research and synthesize a lot of data and information to reach conclusions i also keep my continuing legal education classes up so that my license is current and i've used some of those opportunities to take classes on school law so i think all of those things would make me an excellent candidate for school board member groups do you have any particular cern's that are making you run for school board or or just your general of strong interest in the school district i wouldn't say that there's a strong concern to make me run other than my involvement has always been to make a difference in the school district and i think that's a next step opportunity for me  the one concern that i think i have seen is that i am a person who works well with others and i think we need to put more people on the board who are willing to work  together in order for a common goal otherwise i think it's not going to happen and you're not going to make the right decisions if you're not willing to work with one another and leave your differences in the boardroom  what priorities would you have as as a school board member well i think my top priority and i think most people would agree that in an educational institution your primary focus has to be our academics and i am proud to say that i think we do a very good job of preparing our students for education after high school but i do think that there's always room for improvement i think that would be my highest priority but i also think that there are budget issues that arise the school board has increases in the amount of money that we are going to have to pay towards teacher pensions and when you look at increases in one year of six hundred thousand dollars you really have to think of unique ways in order to pay for that instead of just thinking about trying to cut six hundred thousand dollars from your budget or raise six hundred thousand dollars from taxpayer money and addition the big prior to priority for me is communication i've made this a priority in my p t a operations if anyone gets the high school p t s they e mail blast that's something that i create each week to try and keep people informed and i think the school board should do the same thing with issues and work that it's doing great how would you approach making funding decisions between academic matters and others well as i said before i truly think that our job is to adequately educate our students however i don't think that that means that an academic expenditure would always be picked over say an athletic or arts or other extracurricular activities i have gone to many college admissions presentations and never once did those counselors say i am looking for a straight a student what they say is that they're looking for a student with strong grades and with a bunch of extracurricular activities and i think it's the job of the school district to fund those extracts extracurricular activities whether they be athletics or the arts or other curricular activities so what i see is the issue is having a long term plan so that one isn't being spent on at the expense of another and that's an interesting  perspective i'd like to ask you about the use of the western area of career and technical center do you think that there are more students who could be using that if they were encouraged by the school to do that or the school district or do you think because we don't send very many students are right i think i look past my pass notes and i think we send between fourteen or sixteen students as military limits are just and i and i will say that as the editor of the email blast that the p t a sends out i was trying to get some information because i know last year there was an i t night there and it was very difficult to find any information on our web site about it i don't know how the school district notifies students who might have an interest in that but absolutely i think that not everyone is intended to go on to post high school education in the traditional sense i do know though that this statistic in our school is about ninety six percent of our students go on to either a four year or two year institution so to the extent that those students aren't thriving in those the post high school education that's maybe where we should look at is those students and trying to find o's before they graduate what do you think the role of the school board should be in encouraging public input on decisions about either educational decisions about curriculum and such or planning decisions of a new schools or other large issues i think it should be a top priority we're talking about communications and every year exactly i that we have a unique opportunity here in peter's township because of the education that our community members have just because i might make it on to school board that's nine people we're not going to be an expert on everything but we have experts in the community that may have helped in certain situations that we're trying to solve why should we create our own will we'll and not try and get those citizens on a citizen advisory board or something like that so we can tap on their expertise and their opinions similarly i would love to do what some districts are having by having one or two student representatives from the high school be on the board because they are living day in and day out our high school curriculum and following our high school policies and i think that they could bring a wealth of information to the board in a different perspective yes the board should not make decisions solely based on what they are presented with in that boardroom i want to save a minute for you know to tell the voters why they should vote for you ok well i will give you one hundred percent effort in a job as a school board member with no other goal or ulterior motive other than to make the district a better place when you're deciding about who to vote for i would please ask that you don't look and at what a candidate says they'll do or what problems they find with the current administration but look in their past and look for evidence to see what they've done in the past have they tried to make the district a better place and i believe i've done that and if you want to find out more about me i have created a campaign website and if that vote for anderson dot com and i invite you to learn more about me and i'd appreciate your