To the Editors:
This year’s BOE election offers an opportunity for our community to reaffirm its support for two excellent and devoted board members—Wayne Eastman and Madhu Pai—and to welcome an unusually skilled and accomplished newcomer, Peggy Freedson.
Wayne is one of the brightest, most decent guys I know. An attorney, Harvard alum and professor of business at Rutgers, he has served on the BOE for nine years. In 2012 he was joined by Madhu, a senior manager at the marketing firm Publicis with a degree in economics. They could not have chosen a better addition to their ticket this year than Peggy, a professor of early childhood education at Montclair State who holds a doctorate from Harvard, specializes in language arts instruction, and was formerly an elementary school teacher in Los Angeles.
SOMSD serves an exceptional community of families who know the value of an excellent public education—one that’s forward looking, sophisticated in its embrace of the intellectually enlarged world our kids will inherit, humane and creative, attentive and committed to the needs of every kind of student. This is what we need from our school district, and we need it without breaking the bank.
As parents of current and former SOMSD students, Madhu, Wayne and Peggy each have a personal stake in getting us where we need to be. Their common sense, insights and experience ideally situate them to engage with both the challenges and opportunities ahead. Please join me in voting Pai-Eastman-Freedson on November 3rd!
Jennifer Crohn
South Orange
