It's about the kids.
It always has been.

The state's figure for Southampton is $20,621 per pupil for 2026-27, below the state average of $21,199. "Twenty-five thousand" was said on stage on Sept. 21 and withdrawn on the spot when I corrected it.

Tuition is a price, not a cost. St. Mary of the Lakes charges $6,779; the parish covers part of what the seat costs; the state pays roughly $1,600 per nonpublic pupil in security, nursing, technology and textbook aid; and this district pays $1,177 a year to about 30 families for private-school transportation. A private school can also decline a child with an IEP. We can't, and one specialized placement costs $66,000 to $100,000 a year. That is the gap between $7,000 and $20,000, and it's the law.

Controls are a record, not a slogan: eight budgets in a row at or under the 2% cap, the tightest multi-year levy growth of the eight towns that feed Lenape, through back-to-back double-digit health-premium increases (with another 34% approved for January), with no layoffs, no closed schools and no cut programs — while neighboring districts closed schools, cut programs or laid off staff. Pre-K at 100% state funding. The board commissioned an independent analysis of the solar array when the vendor's numbers didn't add up, passed QSAC, and just completed NJSBA master-board recertification.

$14.1 million, passed on the first try — a first for Southampton — with the state's $3.55 million share disclosed before the vote. Half the project ideas came from residents at the community sessions; turning the derelict bus garage into the annex was a resident's whiteboard idea at an event in the APR. It came in under budget and ahead of schedule, partly because the superintendent walked every job site every morning instead of the district paying project managers to do it.

What isn't spent goes to debt service, which lowers the debt line on your bill. That is the only legal use of bond money, and it is what this board has said from day one. On Oct. 22 every candidate on the stage — all four of us — said the money goes back to the taxpayers. Nobody said keep some for future expenses, and nobody said they didn't want to give it back. Watch the tape.

The $29 was the average yearly cost over the 25-year life of the bonds after state aid: $129.78 on the average home, against $100.09 under the old bond that was ending. That analysis was on the table before the vote, and it is still the number.

This year's bill is higher for one reason: the state pays its share a year behind, so the 2026-27 budget carried the whole payment. The $327,468 the state has now sent stays in the debt-service fund and comes off next year's debt line, bringing it back to about what was promised — before a dollar of unspent bond money is applied, which lowers it further.

I said yes to a feasibility study on stage, because data is good. I also said what the study will find: we just upgraded every building and are set for 20 to 30 years, we don't own a bus fleet to pool, and our savings come from sharing staff with neighboring districts — which we already do.

Before I was on the board, parents could watch board meetings because the PTA streamed them, with equipment I set up. The district streams them itself now, and the recordings stay up. The board has debated streaming the work sessions many times in the past two years and voted; I respect that vote, and the work sessions are audio-recorded. If it comes up again, I'll vote the way I have before. More transparency leads to better outcomes.

I'm the candidate quoting the state test, because this spring Southampton beat the state average in 12 of 15 grade-level results. Our eighth graders left at 70% in reading, 67% in math and 100% in Algebra I; the state's eighth-grade math rate is about 23%. Fourth grade is our soft spot, and we're on it. We also screen every child three times a year on top of the NJSLA — more measurement, not less. On Oct. 22 I said decisions about kids should rest on data, facts and assessments, not gut feelings and anecdotes.

K-5 report cards in Southampton are standards-based. There are no letter grades to inflate. Any parent with a child in School 1 or School 2 knows that, which is why this claim keeps coming up from people who don't have one — and why this board needs more current parents on it. And "the basics" are already the curriculum: UFLI and Heggerty phonics in the early grades, a conceptual math shift down from the middle school, and a science program in its first full year. Third-grade reading went up 24 points this spring. Fifth-grade science went up 15. That's what those programs look like when they work.

In spring 2025, Southampton's eighth graders were 56.9% proficient in math. Tabernacle was 25%, Shamong 25%, Eastampton 24%, Lumberton 22%, Westampton 23%, Hainesport 29%. On the state's own growth measure, Southampton students grew faster than all of them (median growth 61 in math and 52 in reading, against 48/45 in Tabernacle and 40/43 in Medford) — while serving a higher share of students with disabilities (25.6%) than any of those six neighbors.

Pencil and paper first, and we do that: hands-on instruction, manipulatives, phones in lockers, a cell-phone policy before the state mandated one. But the state gives its test on a computer starting in third grade. "Delay the Chromebook" means a fourth grader meets a keyboard for the first time on the test that counts. I'm against removing screens arbitrarily, and I'm against kids living on them. Both are true.

An AI policy isn't handing a first grader a chatbot. It's the rules for a technology that's already in every house in town. School 3 is handled differently from Schools 1 and 2; the early grades get basic skills first; and the district licenses only vetted platforms that control our kids' data. The state sets the computer-science standards every district teaches from kindergarten up and has issued its own guidance on AI in classrooms, so a local board works inside that framework, not around it — something anyone who has read it would know. Southampton wrote its policy before most districts had one, and other districts have come here to see it.

That line is mine. On Sept. 21 another candidate argued that the board doesn't understand "the authority that they have in terms of managing what goes on in the school" and that "the school is sort of controlling the board." I answered that the board has one employee, the superintendent, and cannot by law get into the day-to-day operations of the district. The table puts my words in his column and then uses them against the parents in the race.

And the law says what I said: the ethics code confines a board member's board action to policy, planning and appraisal. It does not bar a parent from the building. I'm in our schools as a dad — pickup, concerts, field trips — and every parent should be. Two of nine board members have a child in these schools today. Mike, Faith and I would make it four.

The law already settled who the board works for. Every board member in New Jersey is bound by a Code of Ethics written into statute, and item (b) reads: "I will make decisions in terms of the educational welfare of children and will seek to develop and maintain public schools that meet the individual needs of all children regardless of their ability, race, creed, sex, or social standing." Not "balance the stakeholders." Children. It is the first thing you are trained on every year, and it is the standard I have voted by for three years.

Taxpayers are served by a board that does that job inside the cap — and this one has, eight budgets in a row. But when a candidate tells you the board's job is to represent everyone equally, the statute disagrees with him, and advocating for children is not a conflict with the office. It is the office.

The School Ethics Commission said in a 2000 advisory opinion that a board member can serve as the local PTA president — it called the two roles "compatible, rather than in conflict" — as long as the member steps aside when the PTA is on the agenda. I do. The PTA isn't funded by your taxes and isn't run by the district. It's parents. And this board is short on them.

If independence is the worry, here is the test I'd apply: who is giving their time, and who is taking money. My campaign is self-funded. The side calling parent volunteers a "built-in bias" is backing the one candidate in this race reporting outside money: $1,000 in postage from the sitting board member who mailed that phrase across town. Every candidate's reports are public at elec.nj.gov.

I was at the table for the current staff contract. It added accountability and open lines of communication that didn't exist before, and we still held the levy at 2% through two years of double-digit health-premium increases. The vast majority of any school budget is salaries, benefits, transportation and special education, set by contract and by law; the honest work is making every dollar around them count.

Experience comes on the job, and I have three years of it. The board chose me as vice president in my second year and president in my third — a board whose members include decades of service. Mike has been at more board meetings than any candidate I can remember. Faith has been to fewer, and she has spent more hours at school, community and sporting events for our kids than just about anyone in this race, me included. The numbers are public; knowing them before you get there is the standard, and so is showing up.

In three years this has not come to the board as a problem in our schools, and every candidate on the Oct. 22 stage said as much. When a family situation comes up, the school works with that family — with care, compassion and discretion — which is what the law requires. The policy is model language from the district's policy service; repealing it changes nothing about the state law a K-8 board has to follow, and the courts are sorting out the rest right now. I'm not going to import a national fight into a pre-K-through-8 district where it hasn't happened. If you want to talk about it one on one, I'm happy to.