Well, conservatives may have lost the Virginia governorship, but we won in the Montgomery, Somerset County, NJ Board of Education. Nick Hladick, an eighteen-year-old student won the seat in the election the other day and he wrote to tell us about it;<\/p>\n
My name is Nick Hladick and this past year I was a candidate for Board of Education in Montgomery, Somerset County, NJ. I have lived in Montgomery for my entire life with my parents and sister and graduated from Montgomery High School in 2013. I am an 18 year old college freshman attending the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Last night, with 1765 votes, I was the top vote-getter in a five way race for three seats, beating incumbents Shalini Bhargava (1427 votes) and Sandra Donnay (1594 votes) as well as newcomers Ramesh Durvasula (1126 votes) and Dharmesh Doshi (1692 votes). I filed my petitions one week after my May 27th birthday. <\/p>\n
In my campaign I emphasized:<\/p>\n
* returning to fiscal responsibility by cutting wasteful spending from the annual budget evaluating teachers more fairly by adding more evaluations by administrators; and including evaluations by teachers, parents, and students so that Montgomery only keeps the best teachers and measures are taken to improve under-performing teachers.
\n * expanding educational opportunity for high school students so that they can learn valuable life skills such as interviewing for a job, writing a resume, and other life applications. Part of this includes an internship for credit program which would give students the option to get an internship in the community and use the experience as credit in substitution of an elective class.
\n * engaging students, parents, and other members of the community in Board of Education decisions by forming specialized committees that include board members, parents, students, and other community members, that would help guide the Board in its votes on important decisions.
\n * rejecting Common Core curriculum so that Montgomery Schools is able to maintain its nationally recognized standard of education without the intervention of the federal government. <\/p>\nI hope you could include this in one of your publications about the 2013 election. I am fighting to help the students, parents, and members of the community so that we can improve the educational standards while keeping costs to taxpayers low. Here is a link to my candidacy statement in the Princeton Packet http:\/\/bit.ly\/17FxY4c<\/a> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"