Fox Chapel Area Region 2 sees Zych, Dolan vying for position

Voters in Fox Chapel Area Region 2 will see a race for school board between Ariel Zych and Greg Dolan.

Both have cross-filed as Democrat and Republican.

Region 2 covers Fox Chapel Borough Districts 2, 4, and 5, and all of Indiana Township.

Here are their answers to questions posed by the Tribune-Review:

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Name: Ariel Zych

Political party: Democratic

Age: 37

Education: bachelor’s degree, Cum Laude, Research Distinction, from Cornell University; master’s of science in zoology, University of Florida.

Occupation: Education Director, Science Friday.

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If elected, what are two short-term goals?

“Make community voice a permanent part of our school district proceedings,” Zych said. “We have seen record-setting participation in our school board meetings in the last two years, a sign of an engaged community and the urgency of issues facing our district.

“I know from my professional experience that the best outcomes in education happen when parents, teachers, administrators and community members all listen to each other, show each other respect and work together towards solutions. Unfortunately, there has recently been a walk-back of the mechanisms that enable that participation.”

Zych said she would work to reinstate remote public participation in school board meetings, reinstate open topics for public comment periods, rescind the new limits on comment period duration and provide an avenue for written comments to be read into record.

A second goal would be to establish a tradition of data transparency and accessibility.

“Our administration and board should make data-driven decisions using meaningful indicators: enrollment, family satisfaction, student and teacher well-being and of course academic achievement.

“I will work to consolidate that information in one place, not on several hard-to-find websites, that is accessible to all, with clear explanations that anyone can understand (on things like new curriculum, millage rate and state-mandated expenditures), and in formats that make sense, like spreadsheets for budgets and infographics for teacher retention statistics.

“I hope this effort will make it easier for families to be involved in decisions as they are made, and relegate Right-To-Know requests and speculative budget discussions to the past along with sensationalized political campaigns that mischaracterize our curriculum, schools and teachers.”

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If elected, what is one long-term goal?

”My number one priority is to allow our district to thrive without overtaxing homeowners by reforming our budget development and approval process,” Zych said. “Our largest expense is and should be educator salaries and obligations to the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS).

”These constitute over three-quarters of our $100M budget and enable high retention and further education of our great teachers. They are renegotiated every four years, and our obligation to the state educator pension fund is both large and market-dependent.

”Our budget planning process must address long term salary and benefits liability, but also should not hide frivolous spending or overly generous administrative compensation.”

Zych said she would be excited to instill a culture of robust and detailed questioning to the process “so that we can learn from past anomalies and avoid squandering our reserve fund or taxing residents unnecessarily.”

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How do you plan to communicate with constituents and involve them in the decision-making process?

Zych said that if elected, she will provide meaningful and digestible previews of upcoming meetings, with clear calls for who may be affected by upcoming decisions and with information on ways to get involved.

“The current habit is to post hundreds of pages of attachments twice a month just 24-48 hours before each board meeting. It is unreasonable to expect that busy families can comb through and decode these documents, figure out what is relevant and important to them, and secure last-minute childcare to be able to have a voice in district decisions.”

“My long-term goal for robust community voice is to create, or reinvigorate, a process for the formation of coalitions of parents, educators, administrators, community members and experts around emerging and important issues our district faces,” she said.

Name: Greg Dolan

Political party: Republican

Age: 33

Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics and classical studies from George Washington University.

Occupation: High School history teacher.

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If elected, what are two short-term goals?

“Fox Chapel Area needs to become more transparent with its curriculum and the materials used by teachers in class,” Dolan said.

This past summer, Dolan reviewed the U.S. history and civics textbooks at all levels.

“The results were underwhelming – our textbooks were politically biased, factually inaccurate, and woefully uninspiring,” he said.

“With the school board’s new emphasis on racial indoctrination and critical race theory (under the misleading title of diversity, equity, inclusion) it’s imperative that all materials used in class be shared for the public.

“During covid, many parents found themselves more informed about what’s happening in the classroom — let’s keep open that window to the classroom to ensure trust between parents and the district about what’s being taught.”

A second goal for Dolan, he said, would be to “propose a repeal of the school board’s June 2020 ‘George Floyd’ resolution that accused this community of ‘explicit and implicit racism’ because it is simply untrue and has sown division,” he said.

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If elected, what is one long-term goal?

“Solving our budget issues to end the repeated tax increases,” Dolan said.

He has volunteered on the resources planning group the past two years to help with budget planning.

“Our current spending and projections are unsustainable without repeated and large tax increases,” Dolan said. “The current board chose to raise taxes twice during the covid era, and we’ve increased taxes five out of the last six years.

“I will bring much-needed fiscal discipline to the board.”

Dolan said he sees an opportunity to do that during negotiations with the teachers’ union for the next five-year contract.

“Salaries make up about 75 percent of the total budget – that’s fine because our teaching staff is our greatest asset.

“But the current union contract restricts our administrators’ ability to do their job of holding teachers accountable and maintaining high quality. The next school board must give administrators more flexibility in disciplining, improving, and if necessary, firing under-performing teachers.”

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How do you plan to communicate with constituents and involve them in the decision-making process?

During his campaign for school board, Dolan said, he sent out a weekly newsletter (archive available at GregDolan.com) about his activities and “areas where the board should focus, including improving our civics and history textbooks.”

“This is also where I shared my endorsement by former president of the school board, Terry Wirginis.”

He would maintain the practice from my official school board email account once elected.

“Furthermore, since the school board meetings happen on Mondays, and the agendas come out on the Friday beforehand, it would be my goal to proactively send out the agenda to community members and solicit their responses on the matters up for debate,” he said. “In this way, the school board would actively engage with community members, not treat commenters as a nuisance as the current board does.”