Christina School Board Candidate Elizabeth Scheinberg

Tomorrow is the big day, and if the education of your children is important to you, then you should be voting tomorrow in your school district. But in voting, it helps to be informed. Thus, Delaware Liberal has submitted questions to a number of school board candidates, hoping that their answers will better inform you as you head to the voting booth tomorrow. Here are the responses of School Board candidate Elizabeth Scheinberg in the Christina School District.

Current Occupation: Full-time Parent, Volunteer Special Education/Needs Advocate.
Age: 31
Residency: Pleasant Valley Estates, Newark residency
Education: B.A. English Journalism, University of Delaware, 2008 Graduate of the Federal-funded Partners for Policymaking Program.
Family: Married for 10 years to husband, Rob, with two children ages 7 and 2.
Campaign Website:

Why are you running for school board?
I am guided by a strong sense of community responsibility, a desire to ensure that our children have the best education possible, and the knowledge that education is the great equalizer. I am first and foremost a parent of a young child in the CSD with a vested interest in its success, a volunteer advocate for special education, and a dedicated leader in the pursuit of change.

And what are the top three things you’d like to accomplish during your term?
1. Complete Fiscal and Admninistrative Transparency,
2. To balance the current board by adding the perspective of a parent of young children in the district. Our current school board has a reputation for unanimously rubber stamping administrative recommendations with very little public discussion. We need community-oriented long-term thinkers who ask the hard questions, make bold decisions, and who will advocate our district needs to the DOE and Dover.
3. To Retool /remodel the district using best practices and emerging best practices. We must approach education reform with a goal of attaining adequate compensation for our educators that will attract new talent and energy, not just reward longevity.

What are your views on school vouchers? Do you feel that we should have a voucher program in CSD?
There are far larger districts in our nation providing more comprehensive educational services and doing it with less money. Delaware is the 10th highest funded state, per capita, for education. Statistically, we shouldn’t need school vouchers. Had our past boards consisted of bold, creative thinkers, Christina’s achievement scores would not have sunk to the bottom of the list — 19 of 19 school districts.

However, we have failed our students in so many aspects of education, a voucher system would seem a fair alternative to the current model of delivering education to students. Unfortunately, a voucher system will not fix our education system. Like Charter Schools, vouchers run the risk of cementing a caste system of students. Furthermore, vouchers can only serve a limited number of students based upon any one school’s capacity. We can better serve Delaware’s children by reforming our current educational and funding models.

Do you feel that the Charter School of Wilmington should pay rent? Why, or why not.
If memory serves me right, CSW took over the empty Wilmington High School building. It had been shuttered and was draining district resources. CSW did Red Clay a favor by moving into it and providing the upkeep and maintanence. Should the district have negotiated a better contract with CSW? Absolutely. Logic would dictate that when the contract comes to an end, the district has the right to ask for rent, and should. However,I do not believe the district should request an exhorbitant amount.

What is your view on full financial transparency in CSD?
It’s better today than it has been in the past thanks to the Financial Review Committee. But, that committee only came about because CSD needed a large loan from the State to continue its mission. It was a bail-out condition that CSD create such a committee.

We still have a long way to go. CSD should have an online checkbook that any voter or parent can access. Chances are few will spend their time reading it, bu t it’s only fair and appropriate to provide tax-payers with access.

Which party do you belong to? Democratic

Do you believe in Evolution? Do you feel Creationism has a place in CSD?
I believe in evolution. Creationism has a place in religion, not in a public school classroom. It is more appropriate to teach creationism in parochial schools such as those in the Catholic Diocease. As far as this debate goes, I follow this philosophy: Time is a man-made concept. God never said how long a day was in the bible. A day could have stretched millions of years during which time evolution took place.

7. It has been said about other school districts that there are “Have” and “Have Not” schools. First, do you believe this true of CSD?
There is an absolute disparity between many distict schools. I’ve never met a teacher who said “I want to teach at a school in the city!” That’s a telling message. For CSD it is also complicated by having the district split by 15 miles of highway.

Second, if you do believe it is true, how would you address that imbalance?
In long-term care, we plan everything, from quality of life to medication. We need to approach our students with a similar philosophy. Students cannot learn without acknowledgement and adaptation to each child’s individual learning needs, nor can our students succeed wihtout empowered teachers and competent administration. I fully support pay incentives to bring highly qualified teachers into “Have Not” schools, whether they are in the city or the suburbs. I believe we need to re-evaluate our system for salary increases, to one that rewards student progress and not longevity.

I’d also like to see a decrease in outsourcing of support services. Directly employed distict staff have a vested interest in their communities and schools. When we outsource services we import personnel who frequently don’t live anywhere near their students and therefore have less of an interest in the school community and lack school pride.