School Board Election: Greg Nichols Answers Our Questions

Editor's note: Candidates for and have been asked to complete questionnaires about who they are, why they're running and their positions on some of the key issues. Plainfield Patch will run them as they are received and they will be available up through the April 5 election.

These are the candidates' own words, written specifically for the benefit of those who are deciding how they will vote.

PLAINFIELD DISTRICT 202  SCHOOL BOARD QUESTIONNAIRE

Name: Greg Nichols

Address:  25200 Round Barn Road, Plainfield

E-mail address: greg@ieee.org

Age: 46

Marital status: Married

Name of spouse: Lucia

Names, ages of children:   

Andrea – 20, Alexandria – 17, Austen – 12, Aaren - 7

Education (please name degree attained and school):

Bachelor of Science – Electrical Engineering – University of Wisconsin - 1987
Master of Business Administration –Cardinal Stritch University - 1995

Profession and employer:             

Engineering – The Automation Technology Network (owner/partner)

Community (non-elected) groups of which you are a member:       

Parent organizations at Plainfield North High School, Ira Jones Middle School and Walker’s Grove Elementary

Previous and current elected political office history (please include the years of terms):

None

Why are you seeking this office?

The declining readiness of our kids in the world outside of Plainfield concerns me more and more. I hear stories about students who graduate from Plainfield and then are ineligible to get into different universities because they don’t have the required number of credits. I have heard of multiple kids telling their parents to get siblings out of Plainfield schools as our lack of rigor in the curriculum left them ill-prepared for college.

I work with my younger children and see with my own eyes that the curriculum being taught was a moving target. I do not want children to be part of an experiment. I really believe we need to backup from the accountability fad and the focus on driving all decisions with hard data. We need to realize and accept that a diverse group of children does not fit into a bell curve and therefore cannot be fairly assessed using tests that assume they do. The poor assumptions used to derive our (the state’s) assessment tools leave the kids on both ends of the spectrum out in the cold.

Why should someone choose you instead of those you are running against?

I have a unique perspective compared to most of the others running for a board seat. I have four children, three of whom are still in District 202 -- high school, middle school and elementary school. My wife has been president, treasurer, co-president and an active member of PTO and PTSO organizations from elementary school to high school, including CAPE, so I have been volunteering for, living, eating and breathing this school district in my household for more than 11 years. I can certainly say I care as much as anyone about the success of this District. I am not a political game player and what you see is what you get.

What do you see as the issues in this election?

The issues I see the clearest in this election are the success of our students and the financial condition of our district.

What would you like to accomplish if elected to this position? Please be specific.

I want to participate actively in the educational leadership of the district. I want to be a visible presence at our buildings, support our staff vigorously, and champion the perfection of our curriculum combined with teaching methods and technological advances to enhance learning. I want to participate in efforts to roll back the clock and shift our main focus from testing and accountability based solely on existing assessments, and return that focus back to curriculum and learning for the betterment of our children’s education.

I also want to participate in the ways and means leadership of the district in order to put us on a firm financial footing that can respect the economic state of our taxpayers and balance their interests with the needs of education. I want to work to influence policies and decisions to actually see the per-student cost of education reduced, with the net effect of lowering the tax burden to our community.

I want to voice my two cents worth regarding the renewal of our labor agreements, just as I likewise want to participate in the recruitment and selection of our next superintendant. Along those same lines, I would aggressively work to analyze the organization of our district from the top down, examining every policy, justifying every position, reviewing every job description, scrutinizing every compensation package and emerging with a modern, high-performance, efficiently-operated organizational structure that is publicly well documented and actively maintained.

What is your opinion of the current budget deficit? What would be your proposal for how to eliminate it? What budget cuts do you support? Be as specific as possible.

I believe that the current deficit(s) were well known long ago and ignored, for a multitude of reasons. This district is still healing from the stinging wound of stalled growth. We operated for a long time within a model of ever-increasing annual revenues and chaotic growth issues that really stole the focus away from the more basic issues leading to the problems we have now. The PMA studies from several years back were warning of such problems, yet we did not address them.

My previous answer explaining some of what I want to accomplish if elected applies directly to my biggest deficit elimination strategy – a complete analysis of the entire structure of the district. I support almost any cuts that make sense after a rigorous analysis. I do not consider any option off the table. I really cannot be more specific in providing any fuel for a fire as I do not know the results of the analysis I propose.

What is your opinion of the school board’s recent decision to use federal grant money to retain jobs for a year instead of using it to pay down debt owned on land purchases? Please explain.

I fully support the decision and I am frankly surprised that it was not unanimous. The federal program is so incredibly specific about what the money can be used for and further, what it cannot be used for, that I am surprised that there was as much discussion as there was about this. What we ran into was that no government body at the state or federal levels would give us a clear answer.

To me, this just looks like the program was indeed being compromised and that we were basically being given a wink and a nod to do the same as several other program participants have done and use the money as we see fit. To be clear, my "wink and a nod" comments are aimed at the state and federal entities that refused to provide answers. I believe the district administration did their due diligence to examine what opportunities existed for the use of this money. I just disagree with them.

The bottom line here is that we need to keep every teacher we can to support the programs we feel are effective. I did not hear a single one of these positions being cut described as ineffective or unnecessary. This is a problem. If we can retain additional effectiveness for our students for even only one more year, that is the easy and correct answer.

Do you think the school boundaries need to be redrawn because of shifts in enrollment? If yes, how would you propose doing so? If no, how can you ensure that every school provides the same opportunities if one has more students than another?

If an analysis of attendance at each school determines that rezoning is an appropriate solution to some problem(s), so be it. As upsetting as it is for parents to consider changes for their children, the children have very little, if any, difficulty adapting to things like this. For the rare case that truly does have issues with a move, these special cases can be considered for their individual merit as needed.

Would you support a switch in school funding that would increase income tax in exchange for a drop in property tax?

The short answer to the question is absolutely not! I have watched the spending for education rise year after year, administration after administration, telling us that the answer to poor performance in schools is to throw more money at them. This is nonsense. As a nation, we are spending unbelievable sums of money on education and it just keeps getting worse.

Every new secretary of education or freshly re-elected senator has the answer to all our woes and it always involves spending more of our money. I believe that there has to be a way to provide a great education to every child for far less money than we take as taxes today. I want to see all taxes reduced because we are able to be high-performance for less money, not because we take more money from a different source.