Jessica Clayton
Jessica Clayton was an at-large member of the Brick Township Public Schools school board in New Jersey. She assumed office on January 4, 2018. She left office in 2020.
Clayton (independent) ran for election to the New Jersey General Assembly to represent District 10. She did not appear on the ballot for the general election on November 2, 2021.
Biography
Clayton's professional experience includes working as a teacher and owner of a home daycare called Riverside Rhymes Nature Play School. She has also volunteered as a co-leader for a mixed age Daisy/Brownie troop. Clayton earned her New Jersey teacher certification for Preschool through third grade and Kindergarten through fifth grade. She completed a P-3 certification program at Montclair State University. Clayton graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in both history and English.[1]
Elections
2021
See also: New Jersey General Assembly elections, 2021
General election
General election for New Jersey General Assembly District 10 (2 seats)
Incumbent Gregory P. McGuckin and incumbent John Catalano defeated Mary Quilter and Garitt Kono in the general election for New Jersey General Assembly District 10 on November 2, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Gregory P. McGuckin (R) | 34.6 | 55,871 |
| ✔ | John Catalano (R) | 34.4 | 55,463 | |
| Mary Quilter (D) | 15.6 | 25,115 | ||
| Garitt Kono (D) | 15.5 | 24,986 | ||
| Total votes: 161,435 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Jessica Clayton (Independent)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for New Jersey General Assembly District 10 (2 seats)
Garitt Kono and Mary Quilter advanced from the Democratic primary for New Jersey General Assembly District 10 on June 8, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Garitt Kono | 50.1 | 5,870 | |
| ✔ | Mary Quilter | 49.9 | 5,846 | |
| Total votes: 11,716 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
Republican primary election
Republican primary for New Jersey General Assembly District 10 (2 seats)
Incumbent John Catalano and incumbent Gregory P. McGuckin defeated Geraldine Ambrosio and Brian Quinn in the Republican primary for New Jersey General Assembly District 10 on June 8, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | John Catalano | 30.3 | 11,119 | |
| ✔ | | Gregory P. McGuckin | 30.0 | 10,986 |
| Geraldine Ambrosio | 20.0 | 7,332 | ||
| Brian Quinn | 19.7 | 7,208 | ||
| Total votes: 36,645 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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2017
Two of the seven seats on the Brick Township Public Schools school board in New Jersey were up for at-large general election on November 7, 2017. Newcomers Jessica Clayton and Maria Foster defeated incumbent John Barton to win the seats. Clayton and Foster, along with the additional five board members, will be tasked with hiring a new superintendent.[2]
Results
| Brick Township Public Schools, At-Large General Election, 3-year terms, 2017 |
||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
 Jessica Clayton |
37.06% | 8,522 |
| Maria Foster |
36.21% | 8,325 |
| John Barton Incumbent | 25.98% | 5,974 |
| Write-in votes | 0.75% | 173 |
| Total Votes (100) | 22,994 | |
| Source: Ocean County Clerk, "2017 General Election November 7, 2017: Official Report," accessed March 22, 2018 | ||
Funding
Clayton did not report campaign contributions or expenditures in this election as of October 17, 2017, according to the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.[3]
Campaign themes
2021
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Jessica Clayton did not complete Ballotpedia's 2021 Candidate Connection survey.
2017
Clayton's campaign website highlighted the following themes:
| “ | Recess
Our students are losing their recess for every minor infraction: first graders who forget to sign their name on their papers; children who didn’t finish their classwork; and any child that has been ‘moved to Red’ on the classroom behavior chart. Kids need recess everyday to “sharpen memory, learning, and focus all vital executive functions needed for cognitive thinking in the school day.” (Shumaker, Heather, It’s Okay to Go Up the Slide p. 124). It also provides exercise, decreases misbehavior, builds friendships, and increases our children’s happiness. We need to stand up for our children's right to take a break and play with their friends so that they can go back to the classroom renewed and ready to learn. Trust Teachers PARCC test results are defining students' experiences everyday by dictating curriculum, textbook purchases, professional development, and budget expenditures. I want to bring those decisions back to teachers. Overall, I think schools should be a place that prepares kids for their prospective jobs; giving them a good baseline education as a springboard for whatever it is they end up doing. At the same time, letting them try out different subjects like art, science, language, shop, music, advanced math, writing, woodworking, gardening, history, graphic design, language etc...helping kids figure out what they want to do for their life's work. I want the curriculum to be based on what the individual kids need to know. For example, if your third grade student is obsessed with coding, I think it's really wonderful to bring coding into the mathematics lesson and/or the literary lesson, in addition to actually teaching him more about computers because for that child, coding is was motivates him/her to learn. At the same time, the other students in the class benefit because they learn about something new that they may eventually turn into a career. PARCC tests (and administrators) take those opportunities away by requiring teachers to constantly 'teach to the test'. What's measured in the tests isn't necessarily relevant to what individual people actually need to know and learn to be successful in life, school, or the work force. I want teachers to once again have the power to guide what material that their students cover in class because they are the ones who know our kids best. I also want them to make their own professional development choices because they know what their own strengths and weaknesses are and what they need to know to better support their students. Teachers know how to use student's interests to teach them a wide range of skills. We need to let them do their jobs. Behavior Charts Though teachers know that Behavior Charts are not best practice, they have become the go-to classroom management technique here in Brick schools. Not only do our children waste precious time in the classroom and at home obsessing about what color they and their classmates are on, the charts also don't teach children about how to behave respectfully. In an age where children's social skills are poorly developed due to lack of play & recess, overuse of technology, and over scheduled families, I would like Brick administrators to set aside class time to teach children how to understand and manage their emotions and behavior. Instead of using our professional development budget to improve PARCC test scores, let's train our teachers in Conscious Discipline or Mindfulness. Play Let’s bring play back to early childhood education. "Play for young children is not recreation activity, it is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity. Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met." James L Hymes I want to bring play/choice time back to Kindergarten through Second grade. I would like to see a minimum of 2 hours of play time for Kindergartners and an hour of play time in 1st and 2nd grades, in addition to their half hour mandatory recess. Through their interaction with educational materials, like blocks, dramatic play centers, loose part tinkering supplies, and each other, children will naturally improve their physical, cognitive, social emotional, mathematical and linguistic skills. Budget
Outdoor Classrooms Using grant money and volunteers from the community, let’s build Edible Schoolyards that are planted and maintained by the kids at every school. These spaces will encourage children to follow their own interests while teaching them valuable Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) skills. PARCC Tests The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires PARCC tests but ESSA doesn't require that we use these tests to dictate our entire curriculum. As a board we could stand together and say that we don't want PARCC tests to dictate teacher training. The NJ Assembly just voted (69 yes, 3 abstentions and, only 2 no votes) to stop PARCC tests from becoming a graduation requirement in 2021. We could stand with our assembly and encourage our NJ senators to stop these new regulations before they are implemented. We can limit how powerful these PARCC tests become. Mindfulness Anxiety in children and adults is on the rise. A town-wide Mindfulness program would teach teachers, administrators, and students to:
Vocational Program Internships Let's give our students in Brick all the opportunities we can to prepare them for their careers. I would love to give all the sophomores who are interested a chance to do a day long internship at different vocational programs so that they can discover all the different options we have available for them. My experience as a substitute teacher taught me that there were lots of other jobs in education that I might have enjoyed had I the opportunity to try them before I committed to a focus.[4] |
” |
| —Jessica Clayton (2017)[5] | ||
See also
2021 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Jessica Clayton 2017 campaign website, "Meet Jessica," accessed September 13, 2017
- ↑ Ocean County New Jersey, "2017 General Election November 7, 2017, Unofficial Results," accessed November 8, 2017
- ↑ New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission, "Filings," accessed October 17, 2017
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Jessica Clayton 2017 campaign website, "Platform," accessed September 13, 2017
