Board of Education candidate Wendy Sachs is emphatic on the point that increasing the tax burden on South Orange and Maplewood residents isn't the solution to the school district's budget woes—made dire by the announcement earlier this month that 80.9 percent of the district's state aid would be cut, which resulted in the plan to outsource 76 special education paraprofessionals.

"We are paying more [taxes] than almost any other community in the country, so we should have exemplary schools. The answer's not to raise more taxes," said Sachs, a seven-year South Orange resident who's one of four candidates vying for three seats on the Board in the April 20 election. In the course of an interview with Patch, she expressed her belief that special education is "sacrosanct" and that the district can't afford to put its technology plan or efforts to confront the achievement gap on hold, despite its current fiscal predicament.

Sachs, the mother of a third-grade son and first-grade daughter at South Mountain, is a former congressional press secretary and television news producer for CNN, Fox News and NBC. (She won an Emmy for "Dateline NBC"'s coverage of the Columbine shootings.) She's also the author of a book, "How She Does It: Secrets of Successful Stay-at-Work Moms," and currently works for the public relations firm Dan Klores Communications.

She started to take an active interest in the school system last year, when she learned from then-South Mountain Principal Tom Gibbons that local schools were seriously behind other districts in technology, lacking even basics like sufficient computers, and feels passionately that all elementary school classes should be outfitted with virtual technology.

"It was really at that time that I said, you know, we're really five or six years behind," recalled Sachs, who shares the frustration of parents wondering where their tax dollars are going, since per-pupil spending in South Orange-Maplewood as on par with communities known for good schools like Millburn and Livingston. (According to a report released Monday by the state Department of Education, per-pupil spending locally is $14,640 in the 2009-2010 school year, compared to $14,910 in Millburn and $13,712 in Livingston.)

Sachs observed that New York City expatriates who move to the community like she did are often apprehensive about the quality of local schools and that her experience with her children's teachers has been "a mixed bag." In order to improve instruction, she thinks there needs to be greater accountability.

"The administrators absolutely have to be accountable and to raise the standards within their schools," she said, also noting that mentorships could be arranged so that excellent teachers can be emulated by their peers. However, she thinks that under-performing teachers should be taken out of the classroom. (If you're under-performing in the corporate area, you lose your job," she observed.) And if they have tenure, "clever solutions" for what they should do within the school should be sought out.

She noted that quality instruction is crucial in addressing the achievement gap and that the district should also be "open-minded" toward new approaches. She gave the example of charter schools with longer hours, one-on-one mentorships, more rigidity in the curriculum and private money sought to fund innovative programming.

Sachs attended her first Board of Education meeting last spring when the chamber was filled with South Mountain parents upset by the superintendent's decision not to offer tenure to then-principal Gibbons. Because it was a personnel matter, the Board wasn't at liberty to discuss the reasons for letting Gibbons go, but he later requested a public Donaldson hearing to state his case, and the Board declined to reinstate him.

"I think the community wanted a greater sense of transparency," said Sachs, who ultimately felt the superintendent adequately explained what he was looking for in an administrator, and that Gibbons's replacement Tina Lehn is an "excellent" principal. However, she feels that someone at the Board level could have done a better job communicating with concerned parents. "Our community is a very smart and engaged community. They need to know who their administrators are, why they're being hired and why they're being fired."