Krishna Bansal: Candidate Profile

Note: Answers provided have not been edited for grammar, misspellings or typos. In some instances, candidate claims that could not be immediately verified have been omitted. Jump to:BioKey IssuesQA Bio City: NapervilleWebsite: http://www.bansal204.comOffice sought: Indian Prairie Unit District 204 School Board (4-year Terms)Age: 42Family: Married with Two Children attending White Eagle Elementary and Still Middle SchoolOccupation: Self-made entrepreneur Built successful businesses President CEO of Q1 Technologies, Inc. and Techvega.comEducation: Masters in Business Administration Undergraduate Degree in Business Finance Several Certifications in the field of Technology Private Pilot CertificationsCivic involvement: I strongly believe that every child deserves home and education. I am passionately committed to social and philanthropic activities for helping homeless and underprivileged kids around the world. I am also committed to various local community projects including feeding the homeless, helping the less privileged as well as collecting funds to actively contribute towards the victims of natural disasters. Student Leader in College Secretary of VJMNA - World Awekening Mission Patron of STEM Solutions.Elected offices held:Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain: NoCandidate's Key Issues Key Issue 1 Fiscal Discipline In the coming years, Illinois schools districts are going to face unprecedented challenges in managing finances. In 2012 the school district closed the books with a deficit even as it approved a $287 million budget for fiscal 2013. Over the past four years the district's budget has already been slashed by $40 million. Illinois's Gov. Pat Quinn signed the state's $33.7 billion budget for FY2013 into law on June 30, 2012, after vetoing $57 million in spending approved by the General Assembly.[1] The state began FY2013 with between $7.5 to $8 billion in unpaid bills.[2] This can only mean one thing ongoing pressure on state funding for schools and other projects. All this while facing new federal mandates and the need to implement a new curriculum in line with the common core standards. Managing ongoing initiatives, improving schools standards and investment in new cutting edge services will require astute financial expertise to manage the budget without raising taxes. I believe my two decades of experience in business management and my deep understanding of leveraging technology will be an asset for District 204 School Board in these trying times.Key Issue 2 Career Ready and Globally Competitive Today we are living in an era where our children are competing with the best around the world. It is incumbent upon us to ensure that our children are not just college ready but career ready in a hyper-competitive global economy. Today we have over 3 million unfilled jobs in the USA with near record highs in unemployment. While our school district has done a great job to date, I believe together we can raise the bar higher and benchmark ourselves with the best schools in the US and across the globe. Over the next few years we will have to upgrade and implement standards that are in-line with making our children competitive. We will have to make sure that our new curriculum should get built with extensive research and implement the best ideas from leading school districts as well as other educational institutions to improve education across all disciplines. We should focus more on programs to help our special needs children. We have a great tradition and can proudly boast today that our alumni have achieved the greatest heights in sports, Grammys for music, awards for science, engineering and medicine. We will need to continue further improving in every field including science, math, music, arts and sports to achieve international honors. With my education and experience, I bring a global perspective that will help to make our children successful and making our District 204 stands above the rest.Key Issue 3 A Secure Learning Environment for our children Times have changed and our children today face new and ever present dangers all around them. While school safety may have grabbed national headlines it requires leadership and a passion to do the right thing to create an environment where students feel secure. We also need safety initiatives at all levels to address bullying, substance abuse and other issues that can have long-lasting effects on a child's life and career. Even simple steps like improved lighting, access control protocols, visitor screening and surveillance of known risk areas can go a long way in helping our children. In addition to this we need to look at mental health and support services, student counseling and intervention programs and collaborative sessions with our law enforcement agencies and other emergency services to improve safety training and readiness as well as instruction in basic civic duties and behavior. Technologies like the Internet and social media have made inroads into every aspect of our lives and we need to ensure we educate our kids with the right online etiquette and behavior. In today's world the impact of cyber-bullying or the wrong picture posted innocently online can end lives and careers even before they begin. To achieve academic excellence we need to make sure that we can provide our kids with safe and secure environment in which they can thrive. Coming from field of technology / security and as a parent, my priority will be to ensure that our children get the safe and secure school environment they deserve.Questions Answers What do you think about the shift to the common core standards? How big a role do you think the board of education should play in setting the curriculum for students and what ideas do you have for changes to the current curriculum?The Common core standards have a commendable goal to better prepare our students for success in college and the workforce in a competitive global economy. One my platform is to ensure we are imparting the right skills and knowledge to our kids, so that they can compete against the best in the world. The Common core standards are prevalent in most of the European and Asian countries and provide the base guideline for educational standards. The core standards set a base foundation for the curriculum in our schools and will ensure that any child with a high-school education has a chance to succeed in college and beyond. 45 states have already adopted the Common Core Standards and District 204's decision to follow fast-tracks our children and positions them well academically, giving them a competitive advantage in college admissions as well as career readiness. The Common Core State Standards are based on extensive research and global best practices. They align with learning methods abroad, which are based on the 'mastery of concept' principle. Many studies have shown that this is how a child is inherently built to learn. While I agree with the core standards, I would expect that our new curriculum should not only use core standards as basic guideline; it should be designed based on research studies and competitiveness. Also, at the present moment the Common Core Standards apply only to the Math and English Language Arts streams of study only. We should use benchmark data from the schools that have best performed in our state, country and even in the world. I support a collaborative approach that brings our best educators, practitioners as well as other institutions to garner the best ideas before we settle on our curriculum. I believe the Board will have a very big role to play in this field. Implementation of these new standards will need a strong leadership while there will be a large fiscal implication as well. We will need to develop the new curriculum, train our teachers as well as procure new text books. I will expect a thorough research to be conducted before our board approves the new curriculum and text books. This change will definitely need a lot of involvement and buy-in from parents as well. We will have to make sure that we reach out to the parents to involve and educate them as well as mange their expectations. While we have some of the great performing schools, we should use this opportunity to make our kids grow smarter and competitive.How satisfied are you that your district is preparing students for the next stage in their lives, whether it be from elementary into high school or high school into college or full-time employment? What changes, if any, do you think need to be made?I have two daughters in our District and, like so many parents, moved into this area for the commitment to education that our District represents. We have done a good job to date but we can do better. The U.S. is ranked 17th among 50 developed nations in a survey recently conducted by The Economist. In that same survey, District 204 high schools ranked 646th and 1,116th in the U.S. In our nation over 3 million jobs go unfilled due to the lack of skilled applicants. In fact, the other day the Mayor of Aurora told me there are over 3000 well-paying local jobs that cannot be filled today. But the paradox of having so many vacant jobs in an era of high unemployment is not surprising to me. As a business owner I struggle with finding properly trained employees who can help our business grow. It is this paradox that has motivated me to run for our School Board. I truly believe I can lend my knowledge and expertise to help all our children do better. Instruction should include real world practical experiences. We must partner with businesses in our area to expose our kids and teachers to real world practitioners in finance, technology, retail etc. We must build programs that allow for professionals to enrich classroom instruction and coursework. This can also be a new source of much needed funding, scholarships, internships and direct engagement of businesses that want our children to succeed, for they need good skilled employees too. This can also bring in much needed funding, scholarships, internships and direct engagement of businesses that want the best employees. We need to motivate and reward our best teachers and help them network and possibly even train with corporations either thru projects or competitions so that they stay abreast with the rapid changes in the skills demanded by both colleges and the workplace. This model has been embraced successfully by many our colleges to great success and we need to find a way to replicate some of the good ideas from this model into our school district. We also need to take a good hard look at what is keeping us from being at the top of the school district rankings. We have a great community of parents, students, teachers and business who are all committed to providing the best education and future for our children. We owe it to them to take a deep hard look at what is keeping us from rising in the rankings and what other school districts are doing better. Academics alone do not make a complete person. Our sports programs are competitive but we need to establish alumni (WVHS Michael Bowden - Cubs; NVHS Evan Lysacek 2010 Olympic Gold Figure Skating) and corporate support structures so that promising athletes can get the opportunities to train better and make us proud nationally and internationally. Finally we have a distinguished and nationally recognized arts and humanities tradition (with graduates excelling on various arenas (Parvesh Cheena, TV Actor and WVHS alum; Danielle Panabaker, Actress and NVHS alum). We must also establish alumni and foundation support structures to help our artists bloom.What budget issues will your district have to confront and what measures do you support to address them? If you believe cuts are necessary, what programs and expenses should be reduced or eliminated? On the income side, do you support any tax increases?There are several significant budget issues in our district we have to deal with. Last year our expenses grew at more than twice the rate of our revenue sources. Our largest expenditure, instruction costs, makes up nearly two-thirds of our entire budget and grew at nearly four times the rate of our revenues. Even if we?re not exactly in crisis mode today, these are troubling trends that need to be managed aggressively and from a businessperson's perspective. In my own business, I?ve learned that honestly addressing these sorts of issues early on makes the difference between success and failure. But before we make any sort of cuts to our budget, as a member of the School Board, it would be my responsibility to make sure we?re getting the most bang for our buck. The current board has done a good job, but areas like health care costs need to be carefully reviewed, our long term borrowing costs can potentially be reduced, and even relatively small purchase contracts need to be evaluated to see if terms can be improved. I?ve learned that even when you think you?ve found every opportunity to eliminate unwanted, there are always more I?ll work to do exactly that and exhaust all opportunities as well as look for alternative ways to raise funds so the vital educational programs such as math and science or sport and the arts are not impacted. As for the income side, it's true that we saw a significant reduction in general state aid last year, however I am not in favor of a tax increase.As contract talks come up with various school employee groups, do you believe the district should ask for concessions from its employees, expect employee costs to stay about the same as they are now or provide increases in pay or benefits?First of all I believe our teachers are the heroes who dedicate their lives to helping our children learn the skills to face the challenges of tomorrow. We need to attract and retain the best and the brightest if we are to meet our aspiration of improving our school district. Satisfaction of our employee groups will be directly correlated to education quality and competitiveness of our children. Hence we need to establish remuneration, benefits and quality of work standards that attract, retain and motivate the best and the brightest. However pay is only one factor that determines employee satisfaction. I support developing a plan tied to core outcomes/performance for our district in terms of student instruction, employee satisfaction and also in terms of competitiveness of student population and performance of graduates. We should define what it is going to cost to achieve that plan. Our guiding principle in this exercise while considering health care costs, borrowing costs etc should be to try and holding taxation at its current levels. I would do this in collaboration with employee groups and other experts to identify savings, cuts, increases or revenue opportunities to achieve the above goals including employee costs.If your district had a superintendent or other administrator nearing retirement, would you support a substantial increase in his or her pay to help boost pension benefits? Why or why not?I know this sort of strategy occurs in some state and local government offices and school districts across the country, but two things trouble me with this practice. First, it highlights a fundamental underlying problem of an administrator not being paid a fair wage based on his or her qualifications and performance in the first place. I know the key to success in my own business is to do an excellent job of attracting and retaining the best employees, and paying them a salary they deserve. Using a pre-retirement bump in pay simply obscures from the public what is actually happening. We need more clarity in our district plain and simple. The other issue I have is that this practice places an even greater burden on our state's retirement fund which, at last look, was $11 million dollars underfunded.