As a current member of the appointed Henry Hudson Regional Board of Education and a former member of Henry Hudson Board, Highlands representative Donald H. Krueger Is seeking election to a one-year term in November because he feels he can be useful “as one who understands complex organizations like the school board.”
Krueger, who lives at Eastpointe with his wife Ming Zeng and has two grown children, has been a resident of the borough for ten years, and said he has always had an interest in education.
He has been an adjunct professor of business for the last ten years at Baruch College and previously served in the same capacity at Fordham University for seven years. He holds a master’s degree from the university of Rochester and a master’s from Harvard Business School.
The candidate said he first ran for the Board of Education in 2021 as a write-in candidate, appalled there was not a candidate on the ballot for the three-year term. “Education is too important to ignore,” he said, “and I believed I could be helpful to the community by filling that spot.” He won the election over two other write-in candidates, the first time he has run for any seat since high school student council.
Krueger feels the current Superintendent, Tara Beams, is one of the primary benefits of the Hudson schools, citing her intelligence, dynamics and energy who, he said, with the support of all three prior boards of education, Highlands, Atlantic Highlands and Henry Hudson, “successfully brought us through the intensely politicized and bureaucratic process to regionalize, an effort that included collapsing three school districts into one and three separate teachers’ union contracts into one.
Praising Beams for all her efforts, Krueger added “her leadership and the capabilities of the people on her team now have the flexibility, the tools, and the wisdom to focus on and improve student outcomes for our students. All are on improving student outcomes both academically and socially.”
With fewer than 800 students in the three schools, Kreuger also noted it allows the students to get to know each other in ways not possible in larger school districts, citing the schools as almost “Private.” Further, he said the district’s STEAM Academy (Science Engineering Arts and Mathematics) is highly regarded and even attracts students from other school districts. There is a sense of “Admiral” pride at events including student awards night, and pride in sports, drama, music, media, art, poetry and academics.
The fact there is still a need to improve student outcomes is the major problem facing the district now, he believes, blaming Covid for affecting Hudson students as it has all schools.
Neither language nor math performance on standardized tests has been as strong improvement. To correct this, Krueger said, the board has approved expenditures to provide more resources for improvement including more focus on professional development programs for teachers, identifying students in need of extra help, and providing that extra help.
“We have also agreed tools to capture data more frequently on student performance in order to more quickly give students assistance and provide teachers with programs that improve their students’ academic achievement,” he added, noting his belief the board is intensely “student focused.”
While Krueger said he is in favor of regionalization with Sea Bright, and in regionalization the district has new tools for making new experiences possible for students and efficiencies for our taxpayers, he believes Sea Bright should only be included “under the right conditions.”
These include getting permission from the NJ Department of Education to bring those students into the HHRS school district; understanding the nature of the student body: elementary/middle school//high school/special needs; having a funding formula that is fair and would benefit the individual taxpayer households’ of Highlands, Sea Bright, and Atlantic Highlands, a formula, that should recognize the “ high fixed costs and very low variable costs of operating a school district.”
Krueger cited his own studies in the past that he said showed Sea Bright’s funding formula overwhelmingly benefited that borough’s homeowners at the expense of Highlands’ and Atlantic Highlands’ homeowners on that same basis. He said he has had his “finger on the pulse” of financial information including both grants and state and federal funding and praised Beams for schooling him on “the arcane nature of public education finance.”
He wrote a metaphor in which he described the Sea Bright situation with a couple who fall in love, marry, have disagreements, she meets another, goes through court proceedings and costs, and eventually the new attraction agrees to halt the union until the courts settle the couple’s original marital problems, culminating with his assessment that “we don’t want to be bigamists.”
Krueger will face three other candidates who have filed for the two one-year terms to be decided in November in Highlands, Allison Burel, Regina Melnyk and Kevin Ege. Highlands voters will also vote on candidates for the two- and three-year terms to bring a total of five Highlands representatives to the new nine-member school board.
