Tell us about you: (Such as your
family, children, are they CASD graduates etc.)
My name is Andrew Finkbohner. I am 32 years old and I grew up in
Downingtown and now currently reside in East Fallowfield where I have called
home for the last 4 ½ years. While I may have resided in Downingtown, In my
younger years I spent a lot of my high school years playing basketball at Ash
Park and developing lasting friendships with CASD alumnae.
I am married to a wonderful former CASD teacher and have two beautiful sons
(Owen, 3 ½ and Logan, 2 ½) who will soon be attending CASD. One could say I
have a vested interest in CASD now and in the future.
Tell us about what you do for a living:
I am employed as a Customer Relations Manager for Lasko Products in West
Chester and I have a strong background in sales and marketing as I have worked
as a Sales and Marketing Analyst in recent years. I attended Immaculata
University as well as Southern New Hampshire University pursuing a Bachelor’s
Degree in Business Management.
Public Service:
I am currently serving as the Vice President of my HOA and have recently served on the Board of Directors for Chester County Mens Softball which was formed out of West Chester.
Campaign Website:
None
Campaign Facebook Page:
None
"I look forward to the opportunity of serving on the CASD School Board. "
What
motivated you to run for the school board?
After speaking with many
community members and educators within the district, I realized that our
district was in dire need of repair. Not just from an academic standpoint, but
furthermore from a financial and business operation perspective. It was after
watching decision after decision being made within our district and hearing
from community members who just felt helpless, it was time for me to be a part
of the solution and not the problem. It was time I pursued a change. It was
time the community had a voice.
What
skills or experiences do you have that makes you different from the current board
members or those running?
My set of skills relate
most closely to the business and financial aspect of the duties of a school
board member. While I also have a vested interest in the education of our
students, my strong points relate to business and finance.
I currently serve as the
Vice President of my HOA Board of Directors, and I had previously served as a
board member for the West Chester Area Men’s Softball Organization so I
understand the importance of budgeting and being fiscally conservative while
projecting short- and long-term costing. I also have worked in Customer
Relations for several years and I understand what it means to deliver a product
to your "customers" that meet their needs to keep them using your
product, which in our case is providing the community with an educational
system they want to be a part of. And right now, we are not doing this, and it
is indicative by the number of students who are leaving our district to obtain
an education somewhere else.
A life experience I was
fortunate to have was that sports were my life growing up and specifically
basketball was my sport of choice. I learned at a very young age that you
cannot win a game all by yourself. You must learn to work in unison as a team
in order to achieve your goals. The same approach applies to the school board.
If you have 9 members functioning as individuals, you will not achieve the
levels in which you strive for. I bring a background of understanding the
importance of working as a team to achieve success.
Do
you primarily see yourself as a representative of the community or as a representative
of the school system?
Community ✔
| School System
Please
Explain: While I selected community, I believe that it
is my job as a school board member to act as a representative of the community
and school system. After all, our community is who attends our educational
system. Any decision made should be determined a success or failure by the
overall impact on both community and our school system alike.
What
type of opportunities/strengths do you feel CASD has and how do we accomplish
them?
I firmly believe, that
with proper leadership and direction, CASD can be a district that sets an
example for other districts to model. Community engagement is key. We have a
community who cares about CASD and the education their children are receiving.
The board needs to show them that we are willing to listen and work to address
their concerns.
In addition, there are a plethora of grant opportunities
available that I personally do not feel are being fully taken advantage of. We
need to make it a point to looking into grant writing to enhance our position
as a district. Lastly, Chester County is one of the most desirable places to
live in Pennsylvania and if we can improve the educational system we can begin
to entice businesses to develop here in Coatesville which will benefit our
community in so many ways.
I love Coatesville and our community, and I like
many others have made a huge financial investment of buying a home here. We
have a very close-knit community who support one another and that speaks
volumes. We should look to continue to build off of this in the future.
What
is the most pressing issues facing the CASD and how would you address them when
you are on the school board?
Charter School Exodus. I
mention this as the most pressing concern because this has such a profound
impact on so many aspects from education to community. The impact Charter School
exodus has had on our educational system is that it has allowed us to be able
to determine the short-comings of our school district that is driving families
away from CASD. Items such as Special Education, Curriculum and Discipline are
some of the top reasons for families choosing to send their children to Charter
Schools as opposed to CASD.
Using this information,
our district should focus on these concerns and work to improve them to retain
our student body and attract more families to attend CASD. The community impact
is in relation to tax dollars. Every student that leaves to Charter Schools
negatively impacts the community’s pockets with taxes being raised to balance
the district’s budget.
Onto the main question of
how can this be fixed? Special Education can be improved by providing our
students with better supports (educational and behavioral) for their individual
needs. A very serious
conversation should be had about bringing back the Alternate Education and
Autistic Support programs into our district.
Also, providing our teachers with
the proper supports in order to effectively educate our students. Next, we need
to seriously re-evaluate our curriculum here in our district. There needs to be
constant evaluation and analysis of what is and is not working for our students
and educators. We must maintain open
dialogue with our teachers to hear their feedback of what they find is and is
not working for the students, after all they are the ones in the classrooms
each day. If we are to implement new programs, we should be sure that these
programs are what fits best within our district and not what studies have shown
to work.
We need to better understand what will work for our district and when
it is determined what direction we will go academically, constantly evaluate
the process of these programs to ensure their effectiveness. We should be
result driven academically. Continual improvement in academic performance is
indicative that decisions within our educational system are working.
Lastly, I believe that in
improving Special Education and Academic Comprehension within our district with
the proper supports, we will see a significant improvement in district
discipline levels. The next step in improving discipline in our district is consistency.
When dealing with behaviors, it is important to be consistent in the handling
of these incidents. Inconsistency can further confuse the students and in turn
can lead to further disciplinary concerns. This means a stronger level of
support from administrators when a teacher is handling a behavioral problem and
not undermining them. We cannot have our teachers feeling like they are
helpless and on an island by themselves. Keeping in mind we are all a team and
want what is best for our students and working to achieve the same goal.
Please
share your ideas on the challenge of balancing the budget, while not cutting
too many programs or jobs?
Without knowing the full
financial scope of what our district is currently dealing with due to a lack of
transparency, I will speak to this from a generic perspective. First and
foremost, we as a district need to perform a financial analysis of our spending
on a regular basis and be fiscally conservative with our spending. Determining
whether it be monthly or quarterly what our expenditures are and can they be
reduced and how can they be reduced?
We also need to ensure that
what we are spending on is justified and we are receiving a return on that
investment whether it be academically or financially. I firmly believe that the
last thing we as a district should do, is cut programs for our students. These
are imperative to the success of our students in our district. Our school board
and administration need to be accountable if we are not being fiscally
conservative and investing poorly in the education and infrastructure of our
district. I also believe that our compounded debt should be addressed as
quickly as possible as this is also driving our expenses within our budget.
I will not make any
promises I cannot keep but I can assure you that cutting programs for our
students, cutting jobs and raising taxes are all items I would prefer not to
discuss when balancing budgets as nobody, including myself would like to see
any of this happen. If we can prioritize our driving expenses in our district
and work to minimize these, we can position ourselves in a favorable capacity
moving forward with a goal of zero tax increases for our community.
The
hiring and retaining of highly qualified teachers and administrators has become
more and more challenging. How would you help CASD address this issue?
Diversity is a major
concern of mine when it comes to the educators in our district. I also find it
appalling that we do not have more teachers who are alumni of our district.
These are two items that need to be addressed moving forward.
I believe also that if we
can correct the reasons as to why teachers and administrators are leaving and
analyze those reasons and address them with the intent of correction, we
significantly improve the concerns over hiring as our teachers who are here
will want to stay. To be a teacher it takes a special person. Someone who is
passionate about education and has a desire to help children. We have a staff
here in CASD full of these types of educators and we need to keep them here. We
do so by listening to our teachers and hearing their feedback of frustrations
they have within our district. For educators and administrators that leave our
district, every month copies of their exit interview questionnaires should be
sent to all board members for their review. Allowing them full visibility of
the concerns within our district to help them become educated and define areas
of focus moving forward. It is unfortunate that we have lost the educators and
administrators that we have but we can learn from these experiences moving
forward.
What
are your thoughts on the current discipline problem and what will you do to
address it?
I believe that discipline
problems in our district stem from behavior problems. Behavior problems stem
from poor Special Education and education in our district. We have gifted
students who are not being challenged academically and we have students below
grade level who are not getting the support they need. If we can improve the
Special Education in our district, we will see a significant decrease in the
behavioral problems which in turn will positively impact the discipline problem
we face.
I also however feel that our teachers and principals need stronger
support from administration to handle discipline issues as they arise. Too
often are our teachers undermined as well as administrators which leaves them
lost and confused as to what they can and cannot do. Consistency is key.
Consistent handling of discipline will help the students as well as provide
better direction for teachers and principals. How can out teachers and
principals lead out students if they themselves are not provided with specific
direction?
What
are some of your ideas for improving school safety and significantly reducing
bullying in our schools?
Consistency with
discipline is a large contributing factor to the discipline issue we are
facing. Bullying is a nationwide problem in the educational systems, and I
believe we should try to utilize new opportunities within our district.
In our
district, we should have speakers come in and speak to the students within
small groups to explain the profound impacts of bullying. This will allow our
students to become better educated on the detrimental effects of bullying and
hear first-hand experiences of its effects.
We should also explore opportunities such as ShredHate .
The goal of ShredHate is to reduce bullying incidents in schools by enhancing
the compassion of our youth. Programs such as this should be explored to help
in the fight against bullying.
Lastly, enhancing our support systems internally
to promote peer handling of bullying situations helps to position our youth on
the correct ways of handling bullying scenarios.
If
a parent comes to you with a particular school issue, how do you see your role
as school board member to resolve that issue?
I believe it to be my duty
to hear and pursue the concerns of the parent. It is my responsibility to
follow claims and concerns by parents. A prime example of this would be, during
school board meetings the board members should be more engaged with the
community and respond, within legal limitations to the concerns brought forth
to them (board members).
Community members feel as though they have no voice
and that needs to be changed. We cannot further drive a wedge between the
community and school district. Instead, we should be building bridges to
understand that we should be working in partnership with the community members
as we all should be striving to achieve the same goals.
How
transparent do you feel the district is now?
⭐☆☆☆☆
Looking
forward, what are your views on transparency and what kinds of school-district
information should be made public? (Excluding information that pertains to student records and the
particulars of personnel records that would constitute an invasion of privacy.)
I personally do not feel
the district is very transparent and there is significant room for improvement.
The more informed the community is on the inter-workings of the district, the
more awareness the community will have and in turn we can assist the district
in fixing some of the problems we are facing.
The community at large should not have the perception that the district
is hiding items from the community as this is detrimental to our partnership.
If the board/district cannot be trusted there is no relationship with our
community.
Specifically, Financial and Operations information should be
completely transparent. A committee such as a CFA (Community Financial
Advisors) should be formed to work together with the school board to achieve
financial improvement within the district. This enhances community engagement
as well as promotes transparency. I also believe that financial line items
should be public knowledge.
As a community of taxpayers, everyone should have
the right to know where their tax dollars are being spent, especially during a
time in which our finances are in turmoil and tax hikes are conveyed as
necessary. It is also important to be fully transparent with the academic
progress of our district. This will be a direct reflection of the return on
investment we as a community have regarding educating our students.
Are you committed to a yearly survey of
families, students, graduates, community residents, faculty and staff about
what they see as major strengths and shortcomings of the district and its
schools?
Are
you committed to yearly surveys? ✔
Are
you committed to publicly sharing the results? ✔
Why
or why not? Absolutely, 100%.
I firmly believe in
accountability. I find it to be a great idea to allow anyone with a voice in
our district and community to provide feedback to the board and admin. I
believe in taking constructional criticism about weaknesses and turning them
into strengths. After all, we as a district will only be as strong as our
weakest link.
I also believe that if the school board is making decisions that
are not in the best interest of the community and district, the community
should have a way of providing feedback to the board in the form of a CSAT.
After all, the school board position is an elected position by the community,
and they have a right to know the results. We should have nothing to hide so
therefore the results should be made public and we as a district should
identify areas for improvement. We as a district need to open to constructive
criticism and not be narcissistic in our approach to criticism. We should not
condemn those who feel our district is failing our students and community,
instead we should embrace them and work together with them to correct the
educational system here in CASD.
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for the candidate?
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