School Board Profiles: Peter Guzzetti

Editor's note: Due to the large number of candidates in this year's school board election, we ran a pair of candidate profiles each day this week, ending today. Each candidate was asked to provide a biography and answer a set of questions.

On Monday, we'll provide a final wrap-up of the school budget and provide links to all candidate profiles.

Peter M. Guzzetti is a 1991 graduate of West Deptford High School. He moved back to West Deptford in 2003 with his wife, Kate (nee Howdershell), also a West Deptford alumna, to raise their children Madelyn, Joshua and Emma in their hometown.

Peter graduated from Thomas Jefferson University in 1996 with a B.S. and M.S. in physical therapy. After several years of PT practice, Peter used the clinical IT and business experience he had gained to move into the field of health care information technology.

For the past 12 years, Peter has worked for Siemens AG, one of the largest electronics and electrical engineering firms in the world. In his role at Siemens, Peter performs strategic planning and fiscal management for a large multimillion-dollar IT budget. Peter also continues to work on weekends as a per-diem physical therapist at Underwood Memorial Hospital. In addition, he is active in the community through his involvement in coaching travel soccer and Little League.

As a parent of three children, I have a vested interest in ensuring that West Deptford Schools provide the same opportunities for my children as it provided for me. As a taxpayer, I have a vested interest in ensuring this is done in a cost-effective manner, especially given our state and township’s significant fiscal challenges.

In my role at Siemens, my primary responsibility is to assess the true value of proposed projects and investments, and act as a decision-maker for these proposals within the confines of a limited budget. I believe this real-world experience translates well to the role of a school board member, and it would be my honor to serve you in that fashion.

1. What’s your main reason for running this year?

My main reason for running this year is that I see the fiscal challenges that our school district will face in the coming years, particularly given the fiscal challenges our state and town are already facing. This clearly will not be an easy task, but I believe I have the skills to help us meet this challenge and succeed.

2. If elected, what, if any, changes would you look to make?

At the highest level, I would like to put more focus on establishing key performance indicators when it comes to both educational quality and fiscal responsibility, so we can compare ourselves to both average and best-in-class school districts, and then communicate to the public where we stand against these benchmarks. I think it's important for the voting public to understand where we excel and where we lag as a school system, as this will help us all better align on priorities when it comes to increasing quality and decreasing cost.

At a deeper level, a couple of key areas I would like to examine is our backlog of capital improvement projects and opportunities to expand shared services.  For capital improvement projects,  I would like to explore options for extending the life of existing infrastructure where possible to increase our flexibility within any given budget year, particularly given the variability in state aid.

For shared services, I would like to explore opportunities to expand our existing shared services agreements to further increase economies of scale, as well as explore other back-end operations and business functions not included in previous agreements.

3. What do you think you bring to the board, in terms of experience and viewpoint?

In my current role at Siemens, I do strategic planning and help manage a budget that is larger than the West Deptford School budget, but has a similar mix of fixed and variable costs. From a budget perspective, I act as an intermediary between the financial office and the service providers. The financial office's primary mission is to manage and control costs, while the service providers primary task is maintain and improve service levels. It is my job to find the happy medium between the two, balancing the competing desires to increase quality and control or reduce costs. I believe this experience is highly relevant to the role of a school board member.

Furthermore, I have a great deal of experience in the realm of information technology, which plays an ever-expanding role in education and the future lives of our students, and also creates opportunities to increase the efficiency of school services. Given that, I think it's important to have a school board member with experience in that space.

4. What do you think is the most important issue facing the West Deptford school district?

I think the most important issue facing our school district is how to both maintain and improve our local education system within the confines of our state and township's significant fiscal challenges.

5. Why should voters choose you?

Voters should choose me if they are looking for someone to work with the administration and other members of the school board to find common sense solutions to the challenges we face. As I have no conflict of interest when it comes to serving on the West Deptford Board of Education, I am at liberty to, and fully intend to, ask tough questions and I expect thorough answers. That being said, when it comes to final decisions, I think it is important to collaborate and seek common ground.  A single vote of "aye" or "nay" is purely symbolic; influencing the actual outcomes is a much more nuanced skill.

In summary, I am a product of the West Deptford school system. I believe it prepped me for my career success, and now I would like to give back to this community by using my job experience to help the West Deptford school system be the best that it can be.