MacBain appointed to board
Deadlock between candidates finally broken on fourth ballot
After three tie votes and lengthy interviews Tuesday night, the North Penn School Board is back up to nine members.
The school board voted 5-3 to appoint resident Tim MacBain to fill a vacant board position on the fourth ballot facing off against candidate Elizabeth Ferraro.
“It’s a good feeling, to have an opportunity to assist the board with fulfilling their vision,” MacBain said.
“I have a lot of respect for what these board members have done so far in increasing community access to the board’s decisions and in listening to what the community needs from us. I hope to contribute in a positive way,” he said.
An 11th-grade history teacher in the Upper Dublin School District since 2003, MacBain told the board that he has lived in the North Penn School District since 2006 and comes from a family of educators: both of his parents and his wife have also all been teachers, and his grandfather served on the Perkiomen Valley School Board.
“Conversations around the dinner table for my family, for the past several decades, have not been so much what’s on the news, as what’s happened at school that day and the value of education,” he said.
Time in the classroom has taught MacBain the value of getting engaged in one’s community at the local level, he told the board in a question-and-answer session, describing the skills he would bring to the board.
“If there’s one trait I have that would assist with where North Penn is going, it’s that I value myself as a good listener. You can’t teach high school without understanding where students are coming from,” MacBain said.
MacBain cited examples of four student groups honored by the board Tuesday night as proof of what a strong education can do for young adults and said he hoped to provide a fresh perspective on what works and what doesn’t.
“The more we can push that sense of community, the more we can make people feel they’re belonging to that community, bring people in and fill the gaps that we see, the more often students like that are going to come back and work here and do better things for this community,” he said.
“As a classroom teacher, I’ve seen a whole bunch of policies that look good on paper but just don’t work out in the classroom, where the rubber hits the road,” MacBain said.
Tuesday night’s school board meeting brought to an end a process that began last month when board member Mark Warren announced his resignation, citing work commitments just six months into a fouryear term.
Two candidates were interviewed publicly Tuesday night, with MacBain following a similar interview by the board with Ferraro, a lifelong district resident and North Penn High School Class of 2010 alumna who now works as an attorney in wealth management and estate planning.
“As a product of the North Penn schools, I have an interesting perspective. I’m familiar with the experience, I know what opportunities I had as a North Penn student and I know where we have room for improvement and what changes should be made or could be made,” Ferraro said.
As an estate planner, Ferraro told the board, she’s familiar with making long-term financial plans, re-evaluating what works and does not and making changes when necessary, and her husband and sister are both teachers in other districts.
“A large part of my job is explaining really complex and technical matters and making them understandable and easy to follow, and I think a lot of the professional skills I have in that role would serve me well as a school board member,” she said.
Both candidates were asked how they felt about the two top topics of conversation for the board in recent month — whether to implement a program of full-day kindergarten or how to reduce class sizes throughout the district — and if the two could be done in tandem or one at the expense of the other.
“There are studies showing those students with fullday kindergarten are more productive, but I think our current students, if they’re in an environment where they aren’t learning and don’t have the opportunities they need to have, I think that’s something that should be addressed,” Ferraro said.
MacBain said he would need more information to give a full answer, which drew a jibe from board member Terry Prykowski that he “sounds like a true politician — he danced around the question,” before MacBain articulated his answer.
“The nuance matters. There’s a difference between disagreement and distrust; we should be disagreeing about that, and we should be going through that process and listening to each of those disagreements every single time,” he said.
“Frankly, I haven’t been here yet. I want to be part of that process and make sure it’s done correctly,” MacBain said.
After both candidates were questioned by the eight board members, a first round of voting resulted in a 4-4 tie, with board members Elisha Gee, Christian Fusco, Jonathan Kassa and Tina Stoll voting for MacBain and members Prykowski, Jenna Ott, Juliane Ramic and Ed Diasio voting for Ferraro.
Two more ballots produced the same results, before a fourth round of voting saw Ramic, who was appointed after four split votes in January, change her vote from Ferraro to MacBain.
“I really hate to see this go on the way that it has. I do think that this is indicative of some larger conversations that I think we need to have,” Ramic said.
“This is not a vote against someone, but I think this is really a vote of being able to move forward, so I will change my vote and vote for Mr. MacBain,” she said.
MacBain was then sworn in by District Judge Ed Levine and was seated among the remaining board members.
Afterward, MacBain said he hopes his background as a teacher helps inform, but does not dominate, his time on the board.
“I understand being a teacher and being a board member are two different jobs. You have to take into account a lot of different concerns,” MacBain said.
“But I do hope that my experience in the classroom and in various educational communities,will help us make fair decisions,” he said.