The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Northridge education race features a field of four

Man, 68, drowns at Caesar Creek Lake
5/26/12
Water rescues prompt warning from health officials
5/25/12
Beach Waterpark sued for failure to deliver
5/25/12
Raleigh Trammell’s defense opens in felony trial
5/25/12
UD to move satellite campus to Dublin
5/25/12
> More headlines

By Anthony Gottschlich, Staff Writer 2:47 PM Thursday, October 15, 2009

HARRISON TWP., Montgomery County — Four candidates are running this fall for two seats on the Northridge Board of Education.

The candidates include incumbents Margie Glock and Malia Rogers and residents Gerald “Mark” Brumley and Tina Fiore.

The winners on Nov. 3 will join a five-member board in January that oversees a district with 1,744 students, 237 teachers and staff and a $19.3 million operating budget.

Board members earn $125 for each official board meeting, including board retreats and training sessions that last greater than three hours.

A common concern for this year’s candidates is the school district’s academic performance. Northridge earned an Effective rating on the state report card this year, the first time the district has earned a rating that high. The candidates say they’re not satisfied with that score, however, noting the district met just 10 out of 30 performance indicators, down from 15 the previous year.

The candidates

• Gerald “Mark” Brumley of 2136 Ottello Ave.

Brumley, 45, said the school district needs “some new blood” in its leadership, a fresh voice to inspire teachers and students to higher levels of achievement.

“We can make bigger strides and we need to push our (schools) and our children to make bigger strides,” said Brumley, an electrician with an electronics engineering degree from ITT Technical Institute.

“I think what we need to do is raise our level of standards and expectations. It seems like as long as we’re making some strides, everybody’s happy.”

Brumley, a volunteer coach in several school sports, tried to run for the board in 2007 but an error on his petitions disqualified him, he said. He sought a seat again last year when one board member moved out of the district, but former board member Margie Glock got the nod.

Brumley and his wife, Linda, have two sons, Luke, a 2005 Northridge grad, and Caleb, a seventh-grader at Dennis Middle School.

• Tina Fiore of 6028 Foster Ave.

Fiore, 39, a mother of three, calls herself a “stay-at-home mom.”

According to Fiore, a 1988 Northridge grad, she’s the secretary treasurer for the high school’s music boosters and treasurer for the school’s parent advisory committee. She’s assistant to the head coach for Northridge youth wrestling, a member of the school district’s long-range planning committee and a regular attendee at school board meetings. A girl scout leader at local and national levels, she enjoys cross stitching and baking bread for her family.

So why the school board?

“I just think I can add a diversity to the board that we don’t have right now,” Fiore said.

“None of the current board members actually has a child in the district going to a school here. With me having kids in the district, I just feel I have a pretty good finger on the pulse — I know a lot of people, I hear lots of things and it’s time for me to stop sitting there doing nothing and at least have a voice.”

Fiore said she’s puzzled how the district reached an Effective rating on the state report card, but met five fewer performance indicators than the previous year.

“How are we losing ground, why are we losing ground? Are the teachers asking for things they’re not getting? I don’t know where the problem lies,” she said.

• Margie Glock of 44 Canyon Road.

Glock, 60, is seeking her second full term on the board. First elected in 2003, she lost a narrow election in 2007 before the board appointed her last year to fill a vacancy.

Glock, a Northridge resident for 41 years, counts the district’s improved rating on the state report card among her shared achievements with the board.

“The main goal when I go back on again is to get us up to the Excellent rating,” she said.

Glock, who works with special needs children for the Montgomery County Educational Service Center, encourages parents to get more involved with their children’s education and to boost their own education through evening GED classes.

She anticipates a difficult race but feels voters know her better than they did in 2007. Glock and her husband David have three children who graduated from Northridge and three grandchildren currently in the system.

• Malia Rogers of 5727 Sparkhill Drive.

Rogers, 45, is seeking her second term on the board. Among her accomplishments is the district’s open enrollment policy, which was implemented last year. Since then, the policy has attracted around 165 students from outside the district to Northridge schools and added $1.5 million in state funding to the district’s coffers.

“We’re kind of an aging community, Northridge, and our enrollment was dropping,” Rogers said. “We wanted to keep our current enrollment and possibly increase. (Since open enrollment) we have actually been able to fill our classrooms and use the teaching staff better.”

Rogers, a nurse at Grandview Medical Center, said she wants to help the district better prepare students for college. To that end, the district now sponsors a “college night” once a year.

Rogers said she’s proud of the district’s Effective rating, but her goal is to provide the support teachers and staff need to push the district to an Excellent rating. “I think we could do that very easily,” she said.

Rogers graduated from Northridge High in 1982. Her husband, Mark, and all three of her children graduated from Northridge, too, she said.

Share this article