Murali Balaji is a North Penn alumnus who attended General Nash, Pennfield, North Penn Junior High (now Penndale) and NPHS. He recently moved back to the North Penn area and decided to run for school board in the hope of seeing the same world-class education he received extended to future generations of students. “Like many of my peers who left and returned,” he observes, “I hope to start my own family some day, and insuring my children a quality public education is what brought me back.”
If elected, one of the first things Murali plans to do is establish regular listening sessions with teachers, administrators, support staff, students and parents. “I want to know what their concerns are,” he says, “and the public comment period during school board meetings is not the best way to have a good dialog.” He also hopes to establish a diversity committee tasked with representing the expanse of the district's cultural wealth. These committee members could help design creative activities for students, review instructional materials for accuracy and adoption, and serve as a sounding board for the district’s constituents.
Murali believes that all of the N.E.X.T. STEP candidates are committed to the idea of assessing each school's individual needs - not lumping the needs of all schools together. They plan to empower teachers and administrators to offer suggestions on ways they can serve the students better. “At the secondary school level,” Murali explains, “I think it would be important for board members to talk to student council members and listen to their recommendations.” He also sees a clear need to do more in terms of assessing special needs students and assisting their learning. “We need to tap into our local college community and work with folks who are innovators in 21st century special education,” he remarks. “Temple, Penn State and Montco are just a few of the schools whose knowledge capital we can draw from.”
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For Murali and the rest of the candidates (Alex, Tina and Paul), supporting teacher development is a must. With upcoming cuts in federal and state funding, Murali plans to work towards acquiring grants and other types of funding to help educators get the resources they need to maintain classroom excellence. “We need to be able to develop more leaders among the teachers in our district and work to establish peer training,” he says. “This is something that has been used in some of our schools already… let's institutionalize that approach.” In terms of maintaining a healthy learning environment beyond the classroom, he says there are several great speakers who would love to come speak at North Penn schools. He also sees a great opportunity to offer district-wide programs so that individual schools don't have to shoulder the resource burden individually.
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