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The “Meet the Candidates” series continues to spotlight individual residents who seek a seat on the Asbury Park Board of Education.

There are three three-year terms and two one-year terms up for contest on the Nov. 5 ballot, making a majority of the seats on the nine member board available. A total of nine candidates are in the running for the five spots. Full-term candidates are Connie Sue Breech, Arva M. Council, incumbent Nicolle D. Harris, Corey Lowell, and incumbent Qzeena Taylor [shown above]. One-year unexpired term candidates are write-in hopefuls Calvin Anderson and Carol Jones, and incumbents Kenneth Saunders, Jr. and Felicia Simmons.

Today’s report features incumbent Qzeena Taylor.

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Qzeena Taylor, 31, is one of five candidates seeking a three-year term on the Asbury Park Board of Education. Taylor has served the board since January of 2013, when she was elected to fill a vacancy left by another board member who had resigned.

Taylor was born and raised in Asbury Park but moved to Philadelphia to attend middle and high school. She received her bachelor’s degree in business management from New Jersey City University and her master’s in business administration from the University of Phoenix.

For the past 7 years, Taylor has been employed as a financial office manager for an energy management firm in Secaucus. The company, Schneider Electric, recently teamed up with a California-based nonprofit firm to install solar panels on two residences in the city.

Taylor’s initial interest in running for the school board stemmed from a desire to do some volunteer work in the city. Volunteering within the schools themselves didn’t fit her schedule, so she followed the advice of a relative and submitted a letter of interest to fill a one-year unexpired term left by one a member who had resigned. She was not selected for the post but did not give up, deciding to run in the last election for a one-year unexpired term, which she won.

This time around, she had briefly considered not running again, but decided she would.

“I wanted to be an example to the other African American students in the community. To show them they can get a good job and have nice things and still be from Asbury Park,” she said.

Taylor sees the construction and redevelopment in the city as an opportunity for local youth who graduate from high school to gain employment if they can successfully be taught a trade.

“Asbury Park is a blue collar community, the kids should learn mechanics and carpentry,” she said.

Night school, GED courses and forming partnerships with the city and surrounding universities to increase programming for youth in the community are also some of Taylor’s priorities if she is elected to a full term.

“If we give them something to do, they won’t be idle and it will help some of the imbalance happening,” she said.

In Philadelphia, the high school Taylor attended formed a partnership with nearby Temple University called the “Temple connection,” where high-school age children could enroll in courses that helped prepare them for college. Taylor would like to see similar partnerships formed within the Asbury Park school district with nearby Brookdale University, she said.

Keeping children enrolled in the district is another challenge Taylor would like to see tackled by the school board.

“Once they get ready to go to high school, they look for places out of the district through moving out of Asbury Park, giving a false address or applying to a charter school—that can’t happen,” she said.

An increase in the amount of courses that expose district children to computers are a must, as is the addition of a more advanced curriculum to meet the educational needs of students growing up in the 21st century, according to Taylor.

“Kids in fifth and sixth grades in northern New Jersey schools are doing things with computers kids in this district are not even doing at the eighth grade level,” she said.

Taylor also recognizes the need to get parents of district school more involved in their children’s education, which includes upping parents’ attendance at board meetings so that board members are hearing the concerns directly from parents and not through word of mouth.

“We really just need their input,” she said. “I am interested in what is best for the community. It has nothing to do with politics. I do this for my community and that’s that.”

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