Retired teacher joins Board of Regents |
On Board Online • March 27, 2017
By Cathy Woodruff
Senior Writer
State lawmakers have elected a retired Ithaca elementary school teacher and longtime local teachers' union leader to succeed retiring Regent James Tallon of Binghamton on the state Board of Regents.
Susan Mittler, 69, said she hopes to bring a new perspective to the board, which does not currently include any Regents with recent elementary or secondary school teaching experience. She was elected at a joint session of both houses of the state Legislature on March 21.
"I hope to bring an awareness of the practice of education and the practice of teaching to my colleagues who have little or no experience of teaching at all," Mittler said in an interview with On Board. The board, which has broad responsibility for oversight of professions and education, includes lawyers, medical professionals and academics, as well as retired school administrators who were classroom teachers early in their careers.
Mittler was teaching when New York introduced the Common Core standards. "I was not thrilled," she recalled. She was particularly critical of a requirement that she identify the standard underlying each step of any lesson plan. "It added hours and hours of time," she said.
State policymakers need to understand how decisions play out at the classroom level, she said.
Mittler works as a labor and human resources consultant and is a lecturer for Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She retired from teaching in 2013 after more than three decades in the Ithaca schools. She served as president of the Ithaca Teachers Association for 19 years and was on a policy board for New York State United Teachers for several years.
Being a union leader "has given me an incredible exposure to nay-sayers and to positive thinkers," Mittler said. "I've been told that I have strong interpersonal skills. I seek to understand before I am understood . I ask a lot of questions."
Another lesson she absorbed as a union leader was the importance of engaging in dialogue with school board members. "I learned that you have to work together with the school board," she said. "You have to leave your ego at the door, go in with an open mind and do the best you can for the people you represent."
Two sitting Regents were re-elected by the Legislature on March 21. Regents Vice Chancellor T. Andrew Brown, a Rochester attorney, was designated to serve a second five-year term representing the 7th Judicial District and Nan Eileen Mead was named to serve her first full five-year term on the board. Mead, who has served on a panel of parents that advises New York City Chancellor Carmen Farina, has represented the 1st Judicial District since March 2016.
The Regents are next scheduled to meet on April 3 and 4. With the addition of Mittler next month, 11 of the Board of Regent's 17 members will be women. Mittler will represent the sprawling 6th Judicial District, which encompasses Broome, Chemung, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Madison, Otsego, Schuyler, Tioga and Tompkins counties.