RED BANK BORO BOARD OF ED CANDIDATE Q&A: DANIEL CERULO

Name: Daniel Cerulo

Age: 42

Street: Elm Pl

Where did you attend elementary/middle school?

Cincinnati, Ohio & Erie, PA

Where did you go to high school?

Cathedral Prep in Erie, PA

Did you graduate from college? If so, which school, what degree?

Yes, from Catholic University of America with a Bachelor’s in Politics, Minors in Philosophy and English Literature; also from Washington University in St. Louis Law School with a J.D.

What do you do for a living? (Title, employer, brief description of your responsibilities)

VP Compliance & Risk, CondoTek, Inc., I oversee compliance and risk operations related to condominium and cooperative end-loan financing for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages

How long have you been a resident of Red Bank?

10 years

Do you own real estate in town?

Yes

What boards/committees have you sat on or volunteer positions have you held in town? If you are an incumbent, how long have you been on the board of ed?

I was on the Board of the Monmouth Daycare Center (MDCC) for 3 years.

Do you have children?

Yes, 2 children, ages 5 and 7

Do they/will they/have they attended school in the borough? If so, which schools?

Yes, currently they both attend Red Bank Primary School, and both will eventually attend Red Bank Middle School

Why have you decided to run?

I became concerned about the positions of some members of the current Board of Ed when the last budget discussions came up. Some members were advocating for increased class sizes and eliminating bus services, as well as limiting salaries and benefits for our teachers. Since moving to Red Bank, the general consensus seemed to be that the school district used to have a bad reputation, and this is why a Charter School was established in a town of less than 13,000 people. My experience with the district has been quite the opposite, with wonderfully dedicated teachers building a strong academic community, but recent changes in State funding formulas has put Red Bank public schools into a funding crunch. I want to advocate for our schools while ensuring we are spending our dollars wisely, finding ways to cut costs or stall inflationary increases while ensuring we support and continue to attract high-quality, dedicated educators and provide the services that our students and their families rely upon.

What should Red Bank residents expect of a BOE member?

The first and foremost role of a BOE member is to ensure our schools continue on their path of improvement and are a space for all our residents’ kids to receive a quality public school education. However, as a taxpaying member of Red Bank, there is a twin responsibility to be economical about how we achieve those goals. Cutting services to save a buck doesn’t make sense. We need to be smart about our spending and put dollars where they are going to actually improve the school system without tax gouging the community.

What are some things the Red Bank Primary School and Red Bank Middle School do very well?

The schools provide quality services to the students, including the aforementioned bussing, as well as a variety of sports, field trips and other after school activities that provide real enrichment beyond the classroom and help to build community.

What are some things the schools need to improve?

Overall, the schools are in a great place, with most of the improvements to be made being more granular rather than glaring issues or failures. Smarter spending in the budget to stretch our limited funding would be a priority. I also see many parents in the district who are talented, smart, and energetic with expertise and support to offer, but they aren’t being leveraged now. Although it’s outside the scope of what the Board of Ed specifically directs, I’d like to explore suggestions for opportunities on how we can better engage and activate our parent community.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the district? How specifically would you address that issue? (Editor’s note: our questionnaire mistakenly included this question twice; both of the candidate’s answers are below).

Funding: the bottom line is that just like every family and business in Red Bank, our public schools are facing the crunch of massive inflation. Services the school must provide or contract for cost more every year, and with the pace of inflation that cost is increasing faster than ever. That inflationary force is compounded by the current NJ school funding formula that has seen state funding curtailed over the last few years (a formula that has been rightly criticized for increasing the inequity between districts it was intended to combat). Obviously the BOE cannot do anything directly about inflation or state funding. What they can do is 1) continue to lobby state legislators to fix the broken funding formula, and 2) seek ways to cut costs of services, like negotiating longer contracted terms with smaller locked-in increases or by joining with other districts to negotiate as a bloc. Another critical way the BOE can indirectly seek to improve our financial situation is by continuing to advocate for a unified district. Nearly $2 million in duplicative administrative costs are sucked away from our true public schools by a Charter School that is seeing declining enrollment. It has not had maximum enrollment for a few years and now seeks students from outside Red Bank. While Red Bank doesn’t actually pay toward those out-of-district charter students, it is still funding those students through the duplicative administrative costs of a second principal, staff, and educators. That money needs to return to the public school budget. Obviously this won’t be popular with the charter families, but Red Bank is not large enough to support two duplicative schools.

The mismatch between funding sources and inflationary forces on the cost of education. Bottom line, the State handcuffed Red Bank by cutting a substantial amount of funding under the new formula suddenly, while also refusing to terminate the duplicative Charter system in our small town. As discussed above, we need to be more aggressive in negotiating our contracted services, advocate for a better funding model and end to the Charter, and ensure we are using our limited resources in as smart a fashion as possible without compromising the quality of our education, the key services our district’s families rely on, and our ability to retain high quality educators.

The board of education has approved relatively large tax increases over the past two years of ten percent and 9.5 percent. Health insurance costs – the main driver of the tax increases – are expected to rise by more than 30 percent again this year. What more can be done to prevent putting a greater burden local taxpayers?

As a Red Bank taxpayer, I am acutely aware of the costs to residents. I’ll address below why strong public schools and public school spending in general actually benefits our community economically, but it’s important to remember that while the last two years saw large tax increases, the district for roughly eight years prior to 2025, the district generally kept school tax levy increases close to the state’s 2% cap or around a 2% average increase. It should also be noted that while tax increases these past two years have been very large, drivers for that ALSO include the state’s changed formula for funding which suddenly cut large amounts of state funding from Red Bank with the expectation that locals make it up. That is a state legislator issue, not a Red Bank public school or BOE issue. The voters of Red Bank should be holding Trenton accountable for those failures. Additionally, we can cut the previously mentioned duplicative costs associated with the Charter school with more vocal BOE, town government, and town resident backing.

In the short term, it’s important to look at getting more aggressive with negotiating the contracted services provided to our schools without compromising what makes our schools great: the teachers (and support staff) as well as the services provided. Cutting health care benefits or salaries from our teachers makes quality educator retention difficult and would see a drain of our quality staff to other districts. However, third-party service providers would likely be willing to negotiate more competitive bids for services rather than lose the district’s business altogether, especially if more could be done to strengthen negotiating positions.

What is your approach to fiscal issues such as budgeting, taxes and debt?

Smarter spending, less waste, and a commitment to maintaining our district’s standards. We need to obviously spend our dollars wisely and minimize the impact on residents to the extent possible, but the reality is that inflation impacts our schools as much as it impacts local resident’s personal budgets. Quality schooling costs more every year, but the benefits to our community are tremendous. Studies school towns with strong public schools and strong public school tax bases have healthier local economies for businesses, lower crime, attract more outside investment, and generally have better outcomes across the board. School taxes shouldn’t be seen or weighed the same as other local property taxes; they are an investment in Red Bank in general, even for those that do not have children.

Do you think it makes sense that New Jersey has 590 school districts? Would you be in favor of more regionalization and consolidation?

I would be open to any proposal intended to address reducing duplicative expenses. However, we have to balance that against local identity and community-building. We all want better schools, but Red Bank is unique in its population demographics compared to our nearest neighbors, which is something that would need to be accounted for to ensure consolidation makes sense. Obviously, bussing children 45 minutes somewhere wouldn’t make sense, but looking at the number of local towns near Red Bank that are also small with their own districts suggests there is room for discussion of combining several nearby schools to reduce operational overhead if the conditions were right. However, rather than consolidating districts, a regional bloc of school districts that negotiated service contracts together would provide many of the same cost-saving benefits without losing what makes truly local schools so valuable for our community.

Red Bank has a publicly funded charter school. The board of education recently passed a resolution asking the state to deny its renewal in 2027 and has done so several times in the past.

If you are an incumbent, why did you vote for that? If you’re not, would you have supported it? Why or why not?

I 100% favor a non-renewal of the Charter and would continue to advocate for that as a BOE member. I recently signed several letters in support. As previously stated, the charter no longer serves the purpose it originally intended. It cannot meet its maximum enrollment; even after opening itself up to out of district enrollment it is not at max capacity. People recognize the actual public schools in town have vastly improved and are putting their kids into our public schools for that reason. $2 Million dollars are wasted annually on duplicative costs, some of which is spent to educate out of district students, which could instead go back into our public school budget.

Last year a board member proposed discussing ousting a fellow board member for missing too many meetings over the past several years. What was your opinion of that? And should the board allow members to attend virtually in some cases as a way of making it easier for folks to attend?

I would fully support a virtual option, not as a primary means of meeting (in person is more collaborative and avoids issues of split attention), but as a backup for when people have legitimate conflicts and cannot be there in person. I think that the BOE should act to hold its own members accountable. Board members are public servants and attendance should be a priority. As a bonus, the virtual option could help improve attendance from the general public as well. Many parents would like to be more involved in the BOE meetings, but cannot schedule or afford a babysitter for their kids to attend.

Your final thoughts, or anything you’d like to add in 75 words. Go.

I have watched our children thrive at Red Bank schools and I commit to ensuring they remain a high quality option, while also respecting our residents to ensure the money spent on local education is done wisely and in a way that provides benefits to those residents with kids in the district, and those without. I appreciate the support of the voters who feel the same way, but will work hard for all Red Bank residents.