Character is Bartuska’s Theme in Run for Bristol Borough School Board

Mark R. Bartuska, Sr.  has run for Bristol Borough office several times in the past. The giant of man, blocking the moon’s light on this early spring evening. speaks firmly, yet with anger in his voice about his candidacy for Bristol Borough School Board.

He’s the quiet ones running for office  committee, letting his actions speak as opposed to taking to social media to make political points, for example.

He prefers to be in direct contact with voters, so he can get a real sense of the issues concerning them. He says he’ll have an open door policy for parents and taxpayers in order to hear them out.

‘You can really see what matters for a person when you’re looking them in the eye.” he says.

The central theme of his campaign isn’t exactly any one issue. its more about character, sense of responsibility, conveying those ideals to the parents of children in the school district and voters.

He takes his role of father very seriously, filling with pride, talking about his two sons and the contracting business he has built with his own hands one referral at a time. Its that same sense of pride, he wants parents and taxpayers to have about the schools and its staff, but he senses a lack of that feeling, a lack of accomplishment, and a distinct lack of respect in the air towards citizens sensibilities who  he says care deeply for the district.

“A man is only as good as his word,”  he says, talking about the essential lesson of life he’s taught his sons, and learned from his father.

“That ideal, is something I think we’ve lost at times, as well as putting families first and I’m not talking about hiring them to work in the district, I’m talking about the families sending children to the schools, Bartuska says.

The cross filed candidate, in response to the question about future challenges facing the district said, ” one thing is for sure, the fourth and fifth year of the deal signed with the teachers union is going to hurt us in ways we can’t even account for yet. One thing is clear though, taxes will have to be raised. Its the only way you can sustain the new contract. What bothers me more than anything about it, is how the deal was done. If  people knew what the deal contained prior to the vote, I don’t see it getting passed.”

(Info about tax deal)

Bartuska says it seems like we’re forgetting about the kids and concentrating more on what family member  can get hired by the school district. Putting the kids in the schools first just seems to have been forgotten.

I’ve never been in elected to office here in the borough, so no one can tie past decisions to me about raising taxes, or the issues coming of that.

The most important idea he wants to bring to the board is putting the needs of  district kids ahead of all the political promises.

“One family can’t run this town, I love Bristol, just the same as all the other candidates but there priorities are not serving the kids.  I want to do everything humanly possible to advocate and explore funding opportunities for the district. we need more money to do a better a job here, as opposed to making a secret deal that will hurt taxpayers at the children’s  expense.

We need to come up with better solutions for the problems we face, like keeping the high school open, adding some after school programming for the kids so they have a place to go to be around potential mentors who can could model success for them. They (the kids) are our future, Bristol’s future, anything we can do for them to improve or strengthen chances of academic success needs to be the focus, he said.