Sean Spiller is president of the New Jersey Education Association and Mayor of Montclair. The views expressed here are his own. This was first published in NJ Spotlight.

Sometime early next year, New Jersey will have a new commissioner of education. We know what educators are looking for in that important position: someone with meaningful classroom experience who seeks out the expertise of current educators to continue advancing the pro-public education agenda that Gov. Phil Murphy has been pursuing for the last six years.

Gov. Murphy, with support from his partners in the Legislature, has been arguably America’s best public education governor over the last six years. From record school funding and preschool expansion to creative approaches in addressing the educator recruitment and retention crisis, he’s kept the needs of students at the center of his policies and has demonstrated genuine respect for the educators who have made our schools the best in the nation.

With two years left to cement his education legacy, Gov. Murphy’s next pick for commissioner is a critical one. And while that change at the Department of Education is underway, the governor and legislative leaders should jump on another opportunity to move our schools forward by revitalizing the New Jersey State Board of Education.

By statute, the State Board of Education has 13 seats filled by appointees who serve six-year terms that can be renewed. As of today, 12 of those seats are filled, with one vacancy. All 12 of those current board members are Christie administration or earlier holdovers. No new board members have been seated since Murphy took office, despite all current members’ terms having expired.

With no new voices or perspectives on that board in the last six years, New Jersey’s schools have too often been held back by old ideas and old ways of thinking. We’ve missed opportunities to update critical regulations in ways that would help alleviate the ongoing educator shortage crisis that is gripping New Jersey. While the Murphy administration and the Legislature have been proactive on issues such as fee waivers and the elimination of onerous requirements like edTPA that were blocking qualified candidates from New Jersey classrooms, the current state Board of Education collectively has not been a productive partner in tackling that challenge or others, perhaps due to not enough experienced classroom educators among its members or a focus on the vison of a previous administration.

Problematic board incidents

We’ve also seen too many examples of regressive attitudes toward curriculum and disregard for the safety and well-being of students by certain board members who have thrown themselves into the culture war issues that some political players keep trying to stir up in our schools. At one point, they even tried to roll back critical sex education standards they themselves had adopted less than two years earlier after extensive public comment. Another time, a board member made a remark so egregious it led to calls for his resignation.

The Board of Education is too important to neglect any longer. Six nominees are currently awaiting confirmation by the Judiciary Committee. I urge that they all be confirmed so we can give the new commissioner a Board of Education that will be a partner in progress, not an impediment.

The commissioner will have plenty of challenges rebuilding and refocusing a Department of Education that has been hit hard by retirements and other staff departures. That commissioner will need a board that is up to the task.

The next two years will present many opportunities for all of us who care about public schools to achieve positive change. We have already accomplished a lot, from making the profession more accessible for prospective educators to making it most sustainable for the excellent professionals who are already in it.

But there is more to do to make certain we have high-quality educators in every position; to ensure that our schools remain well-funded and able to serve the needs of every student; to make sure that educators don’t burn out but are able to sustain a career doing the work they love; to guarantee that our students have access to an honest, comprehensive curriculum that prepares them to enter adulthood as engaged, successful citizens; to ensure, in short, that our schools remain the very best in the nation.

And to do all that, we need a refreshed, energetic and progressive State Board of Education that is ready to partner in that work with the incoming commissioner of education.