Panel Discussion at Hightstown High School

I was privileged to take part in a very productive panel discussion at Hightstown High School on Monday, and I would like to thank the many residents who came out to discuss with my legislative colleagues and me their concerns about education funding and property taxes.

The East Windsor Regional School district is an excellent model for the future of education statewide. With one superintendent, the very effective Ronald Bolandi, overseeing the operations of five schools, students test scores are improving, and judging from the response at our panel discussion, parents are very happy with the results.

There were a number of issues that were raised on the 15th that expanded my point of view, including the opinions of school board members that if school budgets are under a certain cap, there should be no public referenda for their approval. In most cases, I tend to favor the option of giving citizens the right to vote on as much as possible, but some excellent points were raised, and I will be considering that further.

I was pleased to learn that so many audience members agreed that New Jersey’s educational system needs to be completely overhauled, both to protect education, and to bring some much-needed relief to property taxpayers.

I look forward to continued dialogue with the residents of Hightstown and East Windsor, and I hope all residents of the 12th District will feel free to contact me with their input on this very important topic. I am optimistic that reform will take place soon, and I pledge to represent the interests of students, parents and taxpayers to the best of my ability.

Community Leadership Breakfast - Thanks Everybody!

Last Saturday, I hosted my Community Leadership Breakfast at the Golden Bell Diner in Freehold. It was a huge success thanks to everyone who came out (about 60 people - wow!) and I hope those of you who didn't make it will join us at the next one. It is something I definitely plan on doing again.

I'm really grateful to the other elected officials who joined us, especially Congressman Rush Holt. State Senator Ellen Karcher, East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov, Hightstown Councilman David Schneider and former Manalapan Committeewoman Rebecca Aaronson were kind enough to join us as well, and I think they offered some great insights.

My hope in putting this event together was to give residents of the 12th District the opportunity to meet each other and discuss the issues that matter to them so that they could forge partnerships for their activism. I think we were successful in creating that environment.

My thanks go out to my staff and the very hard-working staff at the Golden Bell for helping this event to be a success. I look forward to doing this again.

Here are some snapshots from the event: