When Prof. Kelly Kent is sworn in – along with Anne Burke — to the School Board on Tuesday evening, Barbara Honig will be watching not only closely but admiringly.
While her son Karlo Silbiger was a key strategist for the Kent campaign, Ms. Honig was a major endorsing force for her.
As a former School Board member, Ms. Honig knows what it takes to get elected – at least she did in the last century – she knows how to be effective in office.
Hard to believe that seven elections have passed since Ms. Honig, an educator then and now, held a Board seat for two terms, from 1994 to 2001.
What has changed in the 14 years since she stepped to the sidelines?
“When I look back at my eight years on the School Board, you had a variety of people who may not have agreed on things as a group, except for the passion they had for kids,” Ms. Honig said. “That diversity within the School Board was the benefit of being on the School Board. We worked together. We had differences of opinion we shared with each other, and through those differences we came up with a plan.
“The issues today and then? They probably are similar.
“We all fight ‘how do we spend our money?’ ‘What is the priority?’ Kids-centered. We want the students to get the best. We want the teachers to get the best support. Those issues always will be there.”
Glancing over her shoulder, Ms. Honig recalled the makeup of her original School Board in 1994:
“Bob Knopf was the elder statesman,” she said. “He had been on the longest. Mike Eskridge. Madeline Ehrlich and Joan Jakubowski.
“Joan and I were the novices,” Ms. Honig said. “Look at those five people, and we were very different from each other. It took work to succeed.”
Diversity, she believes, “is healthy, very healthy.”
