I recently met Sai Bhargavi Akiri and have started to follow our local BOE and have seen how the individuals on our BOE interact. Sai is polite and articulate. She is courageous in the face of group-style bullying and overly-obvious and dramatic disrespect. I give her a lot of credit to be able to absorb the scowls and maintain her composure and focus on the actual important academic and school issues.
Fundamentally Sai is concerned about our district’s quality of education and value to students and their tax-paying parents. Why on earth would other members not want such a dedicated colleague who seeks truth, accuracy and accountability? The only answer seems to be if they are unwilling to keep Berkeley Heights’ students and parents as no. 1 priority. That then leads me and others to wonder: What is their agenda if it is not, in fact, the students and their education?
Other BOE members give hollow lip service to “transparency” but Sai values transparency and that makes her stand out and even irritate other members; what do they have to hide?
We support Sai and continue to value her contribution on our BOE. From what I’ve seen, Sai wants to be sure that the $60,000,000 education budget is being used effectively. Parents I speak with are concerned that their children get a quality education in our town; many moved to Berkeley Heights because of our schools.
If our district decides to adopt new goals and put tax-payer money and time behind these goals, then those goals should be widely needed and championed by the community at large, clear and quantifiable metrics should be in place to achieve these goals – otherwise how do you know when there is success? Too much time is wasted on arbitrary non-education, and all along our district shows sliding academic test scores. Our students deserve quality and effective, non-politicized teaching in the fundamentals: English, math, social studies and science. Whatever new acronym our district chooses to embrace needs to enhance our students and not merely be a framework to emphasize division and cultivate discord based on superficial features.
We need Sai who has academics in focus, can think clearly and shows courage and accountability to residents and that is why we will vote for Sai Bhargavi Akiri, Column 7-2, enthusiastically!
Karin Sicoli
