Edmund Brooks
Niverville resident Ed Brooks is a 31-year veteran of the machinery manufacturing industry and has been a Questar III Board of Education member since 2005.
How did you become a Questar III Board member?
I served on the Ichabod Crane School District Board of Education from 1996 to 2006, and was president for five of those years. It was because of this involvement that I had a lot of interaction with Questar III BOCES. I joined the Questar III Board in 2005 and have been serving ever since.
I began my career in heavy industrial machinery manufacturing as an apprentice machinist through the State and the Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES, as I grew up in Fort Edward, NY. From there I went on to Adirondack Community College and Siena College where I received my Bachelors of Business Administration. I’ve had a 31-year career in the industry culminating as a general manager of a machinery manufacturing facility. I have also worked for New York State as an accountant and auditor since 2011.
What is the biggest challenge facing public schools and how does BOCES help alleviate that challenge?
The biggest challenge facing our schools is the ability to deliver needed programs to our students in the face of severe financial constraints. With BOCES, it’s all goes back to the name; Board of Cooperative Educational Services. We provide those needed programs and services that otherwise wouldn’t be able to do it on their own.
What challenge is Questar III BOCES facing? And what are some of your goals?
Our biggest challenge is to find ways to continue to provide services as we know them now and ways to evolve them for the future in a way that makes financial sense. As a Questar III Board Member, I aim to help Questar III continue the quality we as a group provide in response to this challenge. We are very fortunate to have such a dedicated team.
As a long-time board member, what has been some of your proudest endeavors?
I am a founding member of Tech Valley High School and it has really been one of my proudest projects for a few reasons. We’ve had a 100-percent graduation rate with the students who’ve stayed there, 97 percent of those received Regents diplomas. We welcome everyone who comes through our door, it’s not a school just for the highly gifted. We welcome students of all kinds and we have a 20-percent IEP population as well.
I am also very proud of the attention we’ve given, and continue to give our facilities. From the Columbia-Greene Educational Center to the Rensselaer Educational Center and all our Academies, I take pride in those networks and the people who helped make them possible.
In your opinion, what is the best part about being a Questar III board member?
I really enjoy the Adult Education graduation every year. It’s so great to be a part of the celebration of that kind of perseverance. I really love the annual Thanksgiving dinner at Goff Middle School. It’s so great to be there and see all the work and care the kids put into it.
Tell us about your life outside of the Questar III Board of Education.
I live in Niverville with my wife of 35 years, Becky. We have two grown children: Melissa and Hillary. Melissa graduated from Fordham University and currently lives in New York City and works as a chartered financial analyst in Jersey City, NJ. Hillary went to St. John’s University and Springfield College and is employed as a substance abuse counselor at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein School of Medicine Substance Abuse Services in the Bronx.
I’d consider myself a “semi-intense gearhead.” I own several automobiles from a sports car to a dump truck. I spend a fair amount of time in my workshop of my garage.
