Tim Bertman Jr.

4 Year School Board Candidate

About Tim

As a third-generation Upper Moreland resident, the district and community have always been special to me. I’m running for school board because I’m interested in increasing our testing scores, student support, professional development, and safety.

Testing & Student Support

Our students went from performing better than 90% of PA schools in 2021 to only better than 60% in the following year. We need to get back to the basics and put education first. One of the factors leading to this might be because our low income students seem to have been neglected. 41% of our students are eligible for free/reduced lunch and only 27% are enrolled. The school board needs to prioritize these children because when a child is hungry they can’t learn and this is shown in the current testing stats. We need to expand on the free/reduced lunch to not only the children that qualify but also the children whose parents make slightly too much to qualify but are still barely scraping by. With proper budget appropriation, we might even be able to give every child a free lunch regardless of their financial situation.

Professional Development

The school board should also look into more opportunities in regards to professional development for the high school. This includes having staff members help students get coop or internship opportunities. We should also provide more support to our lesser advertised subject areas the high school has to offer such as art, photography, psychology, criminology, theatre, professional/creative writing, and web design, just to name a few, instead of it mainly going to sports and marching band. Support given to these other subject areas will help students find the right career path for them and help them develop lifelong professional skills that will get them ready for the real world, whether they go to college or not.

Safety

The school district also needs to implement more safety measures for our children. An example would be a policy for teachers to lock their classrooms when they go on break. This policy would help limit the ability for students to be in unsupervised locations for long periods of time. Having simple policies like that should lower the risk of children being bullied or fighting. We need to improve the punishment system as well so that students can learn from their actions rather than just be punished. Students who get in trouble should have to write essays or do projects in order to learn from their mistakes, depending on the infractions. Students should also be provided mental health resources such as group therapy and/or one on one therapy. With simple changes to the school system like these I believe we can make our district better than it’s ever been before.

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