GUILDERLAND — , a lawyer and musician, is running on her record for a second term.

“In the last three years, I really tried to consider the issues and come up with a reasonable decision about what’s best for the school and fiscally responsible for the community,” she said. “I’ve done that and will continue to do that.”

She went on, “Board members need common sense to look at these issues. I don’t think we need a premise of suspicion and conflict.”

Barber said a positive attitude is needed  “to come to good decisions in the best interest of the school and community.”

As the mother of two children, who are now high school students, Barber said she has had “a long involvement with the school,” going back to when her children were preschoolers and she represented the Guilderland Baby-sitting Cooperative on the Citizens’ Budget Advisory Committee.

She volunteered frequently in her children’s classrooms at Lynnwood Elementary and served on the building cabinet at Farnsworth Middle School.

“I’m just interested in the schools and education,” concluded Barber. She said she wants to continue the “tradition of excellence in Guilderland.”

Barber is endorsed by the teachers’ union. She said she found the statement by Melissa Mirabile, founder of Guilderland Parents Advocate, “shocking.”

In an April 24 story, “GTA and GPA square off: Five run for three seats on GCSD board,” The Enterprise quoted Mirabile as saying, “When the teachers’ union began to use the data base to influence voters and pay candidates to run, the need stepped up for independent candidates.” Last year, the GTA offered each of the two candidates it supported $500; one accepted the money and the other did not.

“There’s no money coming to candidates nor would I accept any,” said Barber. Chris Claus, the union’s president, told her she was chosen because, she said, “I was seen as a reasonable person.”

She stressed, “There are no campaign promises, no offers of money.”

When Barber ran three years ago, in a six-way race for three seats, she said, “I didn’t have union backing and I think I was the top vote-getter.” She was, with 22 percent of the vote; incumbent John Dornbush came in second with 19 percent, and Peter Golden was third with 18 percent.

Barber said she sees her role as a school board member the same way she did three years ago. “My goal has been and continues to be to provide excellent education in a fiscally responsible manner,” she said. “The interests of children and the community are linked. The community does support excellence in education.”

 On combining supervisory posts, Barber said, with the English and social-studies departments, “The idea was to wait a full year to see how that was working. I don’t think we have enough information to determine if that was a good idea or not.”

On the guidance supervisor, Barber was the board member who first proposed cutting the post to half-time, with the other half for counseling.

“Having a senior,” she said of her daughter, “I’m aware of the importance of guidance counseling, looking at post-secondary education plans or work-force plans. The guidance counselors play a very big role.”

Barber also said it is difficult to make decisions “piecemeal” and that Superintendent John McGuire will be conducting a review of supervisors’ posts that will better inform the board.

The block schedule, said Barber, is “a question that has come up so often...first in the context of art and music.”

She went on, “It’s more of a building question. The high school has to look at their own internal scheduling issues...It gets complicated.“

The old system, with shorter classes, she said, wasted too much time with students changing classes.

“Other school districts with different variations may be something to look at,” she said.

On foreign language study, Barber said of introducing more languages, “I asked that very question of Mr. Martino,” the head of foreign languages. “He said the plan was to introduce French and German in fifth grade to have familiarity before middle school. I asked about starting earlier, in the fourth grade...

“We do offer a sequence in German and French through middle school and high school,” with which, she said, students should be familiar.

Barber pointed out that the Foreign Language Early Start program was supported by the school board for “a long time” and that, this spring, the board insisted teaching time be added back into the budget for FLES.

On testing, Barber said she has mixed feelings. ”I realize testing is important as a measure of assessing student progress,” she said.

“As far as elevating test scores to make comparisons to other schools in a similar school pool, they may be different than Guilderland. I’m not sure of the usefulness of that.”

Barber went on, “Partly because I’m in a creative field...I realize there are some things tests don’t measure well — creativity, innovation.

“I hesitate to assign paramount importance to test scores. I worry that would make tests a primary focus. It might end up taking over the curriculum in a way that would discourage other types of learning.”

She concluded, “Testing has its proper place but it’s not the whole story.”

Barber said she will not be leafleting on school grounds in this campaign and didn’t leaflet before.

She went on, “As always, if people see me at school and want to talk to me about the campaign, I’m happy to speak with them.”

On the policy, she said, “I have some issues on making school grounds a forum for political expression...Restricted free speech is an oxymoron.”

Barber said it makes no sense to “open it up and then shut the door on May 21.” She went on, “I don’t see how that is in furtherance of democracy.”

She concluded of the policy, “That’s in essence a re-write of the Constitution. I don’t think that’s appropriate. As chairperson of the policy committee, I supported not making the school grounds a public forum.”