WESTFIELD — Six candidates, including two incumbents, will be vying for three, three-year terms on the Westfield Board of Education during next month’s election. On Monday, the candidates met for a virtual forum to share their thoughts on district spending, inclusion and the future of the district.

Board President Sonal Patel and one of its current members, Leila Morrelli, will be seeking re-election against challengers Lindsay Bezalel, Brad Schaeffer, Mark Shore and Julie Steinberg. The forum, hosted by the Westfield Parent Teacher Council and moderated by Lisa Winkler, a member of the New Jersey League of Women Voters, centered around a series of questions submitted by local voters.

“I believe that public schools are the backbone for preserving democracy,” said Ms. Winkler, a former teacher. “I want to thank the candidates for showing their passion and dedication to the community.”

In addition to choosing their next elected representatives, Westfield voters will be tasked with either approving or denying an additional funding request of $1,675,397 that will allow the district to add new programs and services that would otherwise not be covered under its general operating budget of $131,545,336.

The six candidates agreed that the district’s aging facilities will have to be a budgetary priority going forward.

“There are only three ways that we’re going to be able to meet our needs in this area — cut costs, find new revenue opportunities, or do a little bit of both,” said Mr. Schaeffer, a columnist and commodities trader who operates his business out of a Westfield store front. “We have to go in and look at what I would call discretionary spending and decide what our priorities are.”

Ms. Patel, who has served on each of the board’s executive committees throughout her tenure with the organization, said that she and other sitting members have tried to address some of district’s existing facilities related challenges through their support of the administration’s five-year strategic plan and this year’s budget package.

“We are under a tremendous amount of strain in terms of our facilities, not just in terms of space, but in terms of cost,” said Ms. Patel. “This is something that we will be adding into this year’s budget, which is why it will be so important for everyone to get out and vote.”

Ms. Morrelli, who has served on the board for the past three years, echoed similar sentiments, and added that she would like to see the district add more “relevant and timely electives” to its existing list of offerings.

“We’re seeing that with the introduction of robotics at the high-school level as well as computer science in grades K-8,” she said.

Full-day kindergarten also was recognized as one of the district’s biggest challenges.

“We should already have this in place. We are one of only 15 districts in the state of New Jersey that does not offer full-day kindergarten,” said Mr. Shore, an athletic coach and community volunteer. “There is not a lot of fat in this budget, unfortunately, but there are some opportunities to bring some of this money back into our district.”

The candidates, who predominately agreed on topics such as the importance of board transparency and the value of increased mental-health services for students, were somewhat divided over the district’s approach to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

While both of this year’s incumbent candidates showed their support for the district’s methodologies to date (as Ms. Morrelli reminded the public on Monday, DEI is part of a state-mandated curriculum and not something that can be eradicated at the local level), the challengers agreed that the program can lead to problems if it is not implemented correctly.

“DEI is a great concept in theory, but what we’ve seen nationwide is that it is often used to exclude specific groups. It has created enormous tensions and enormous challenges in all levels of education,” said Ms. Steinberg, who, according to her candidate bio, spent six years advocating for updates to the district’s Holocaust- education program. “If we are going to move forward with DEI, we need to do it in a way that really is inclusive.”

Ms. Bezalel, a publisher of nonfiction books at Penguin Random House, agreed, adding that parent voices will need to be a larger part of the DEI conversation going forward.

“Our district needs to be a place where all children feel safe, welcomed and supported. That having been said, I have some serious concerns about the way in which the standard DEI curriculum has been constructed. It seems to adopt an extremely reductive oppressor/oppressed world view that has been shown to increase divisiveness, and that is certainly not something that we want in our schools.”

The Westfield Board of Education will hold its election on Tuesday,April 16. For more information, including polling hours and locations, visit: www.westfieldnjk12.org/page/ boardelectionapril2024.