Below are the answers I gave to a questionnaire they sent me. -cpg
1. What experience do you have with complicated budgets? When you are given the budget for the district, what will be your process to determine if it is a good budget for the system?
Basically the district has two budgets, an operations budget and a capital budget and the budgets are not allowed to overlap. Several districts in the state right now are seeking to combine their budgets into one big budget thus allowing them more flexibility to serve what they consider their needs are. I think that is an idea that Duval should explore doing.
2. In an era of more limited financial resources, how will you enlist support for bond issues or public school spending from taxpayers with no children in the public schools? How can the school board prove itself accountable to those citizens?
I believe people’s frustration with the board and education in general is they don’t believe we are putting out a good product, i.e. a student prepared for either secondary education or the workforce and to be honest in may cases I would be hard pressed to disagree with them. We have to instill confidence in the public by reversing that trend and if we do that the public will not only feel more comfortable with education but will also be more willing to support it with additional resources. Where I think there are many needs going unfulfilled, we may just have to make due with what limited resources we have until we prove more effective.
3. What are the district’s greatest capital needs right now? How do you think those needs should be addressed?
The districts greatest capital needs right now is to expand or retrofit our neighborhood schools with more career academies. Right now we only have 6000 students, less that five percent of our student body taking industrial or technical arts. We need to quadruple that amount and do so quickly.
4. Please define in your view the duties and role of a Superintendent.
The superintendent is the day-to-day manager and public leader of the district and is there to carry out the policies that the board sets in place.
5. What qualities would you look for in a new Superintendent? How should the School Board and Superintendent interact to achieve their goal of improving the Duval County education system?
The superintendent and board need to work as a unit. The board should use the super for input and education expertise but not rely on it. A superintendent needs to be a problem solver and a leader. A leader must be able to kick butt, hug and roll up their sleeves and dive in when needed.
6. With the exception of choosing a new Superintendent, what do you consider to be the most important strategic decisions confronting DCPS and why?
The expansion of the districts career academies; as I said above we need to at least quadruple the amount of students in industrial and technical arts programs and do so quickly. We need to prepare our children to be productive members of the workforce
7. Please define what you view the duties of a School Board member should be and the time required to fulfill those duties.
The school board sets policy but to know what effective policies are they must be constantly meeting with teachers, parents and business leaders to gauge their needs and then they must be in the schools to make sure the districts policies are being carried out. If a school board member wants to be effective they must work full time if not more.
8. What role should the Mayor’s commissioner of education play and how do you see the school board working with them?
The commissioner should be an advisor to and a collaborator with the board and I would hope the board would be willing to work with any credible person or organization that is interested in assisting our district improve.
9. What are your views on Charter schools and how they fit into improving the school district?
Charter schools have a role to play as a supplement to education; they were designed to be parent teacher centers of innovation and to that ends they are needed. Unfortunately here in Florida many of them have become for profit corporate run schools and that is bad for education.
Look at it as an economic issue. They take resources away from public schools and as a group put out an inferior product, students less prepared for a secondary education and the workforce. If the owners of a charter school aren’t based in Jacksonville those profits are siphoned out of Jacksonville or maybe even Florida. Then charter schools typically pay their teachers less than their public school counterparts so that means they have less purchasing power and less money is put into the local economy.
10. In your view, what has the district done well over last four years? What has the district done poorly that you would change?
The district has expanded accelerated leaning programs (International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement etc) to the neighborhood schools. That is a good thing
Inversely it has moved away from rigor and discipline and initiated practices that have demoralized the rank and file employee. Furthermore it has been very slow to expand our industrial and technical arts programs.
11. To what degree are students in your district on track for postsecondary readiness? How do you know?
Our children are being woefully unprepared for life. We have all but destroyed student accountability and replaced many veteran teachers with inexperienced rookie educators. I know because I have worked in our neighborhood schools and had thousands of conversations with hundreds of teachers in our schools, furthermore our business community and secondary education community report that students are arriving poorly prepared.
12. Which schools in your district need improvement and what plans do you have to ensure that improvement occurs?
Many schools in district five need to improve, let me concentrate on the high schools. Over the last three years Paxon has slid down the rankings and it is in desperate need of new leadership and Raines over the last 8 years has gone from over 1700 students to less than a thousand. We need to expand career academies into Raines to make education more relevant and to bring students back.
A general theme that all our schools need is rigorous and disciplined classes, with additional after school and summer school resources to provide further instruction to students who are falling behind.
13. In your view, is the pathway to a more successful School system to be found in one that is either more student or teacher centric?
I don’t believe those can be mutually exclusive. An energized and enthusiastic workforce will do better than a demoralized over burdened one. Students who enjoy school more and find it relevant to their aptitudes and desires will do better than students wedged into a one size fits all curriculum.
To truly excel we need an energized and enthusiastic workforce and students who are engaged and enthusiastic about school. If we just have one without the other, and right now we have neither, we would still flounder.
14. Against what metrics will you assess district leadership’s attainment of key goals? How will you know when a program or decision has been successful?
The answer to this question really depends on what is being measured. I guess my number one arbiter will be talking to the teachers responsible for implementing a program. They will know what best works and what doesn’t. A problem Duval has had is it brings in one program after another and then within a few years they are gone. I believe the biggest reason for this is they don’t consult with the rank and file staff those in charge of actual implementation before they start new programs. Did you know this year the district asked the teachers to pick new science books and then the district over road every choice they made. If I were on the board things like that would not happen.
15. If we dare to be great, to have a great school system, describe what the elements of greatness are for the DCPS.
We need to provide every child with an opportunity to meet their potential and become productive citizens whether they continue their education or join the workforce. If we do that, we as a district will meet our potential.
16. What specific steps would you take as a school board member to improve transparency and make school district information more widely available?
I have a blog Education Matters that I already use to talk about the issues in the district. I would continue the blog and update it daily. I would also like to see the board members hold monthly town hall type meetings and even if the others didn’t it will be something that I do. The board puts out a daily sheet to it’s staff, I would like to expand that to the public and change the tone, there is nothing wrong with celebrating our victories but we must also acknowledge our defeats and challenges.
17. You represent a specific part of the city—how will you balance the needs of your specific constituents with the needs of the overall school district?
With the way the district is now, with opportunity scholarships and magnet programs, the district is more global in nature than ever and that’s why board members need to take of a citywide approach to their duties. The district is also only as strong as its weakest members are. So where I am sure I would spend a majority of time in my specific district, the overall health of the district would be my focus.
18. As a school board member, from who will you seek advice or input in weighing key decisions?
After spending eleven years as a teacher in the district I have a network of educators whose opinions I value and trust but with that being said I will listen to all credible opinions when making my decisions. We need lots of opinions from lots of different sources.
19. What civic, business, or advocate groups do you have connections with? What about their agenda appeals to you? What is a specific issue on which you disagree with them?
I am a member of Duval Teachers United. I often think teacher’s unions get a bad rap, their function is to get the best pay and benefits for their members and to make sure each member if needed gets due process and those things are very important.
My big problem with DTU however is I have felt they haven’t stood up for the professions in ways I think are more important than salary and benefits. Teachers shouldn’t have to work 20 or more unpaid hours of overtime to get their tasks done, teachers shouldn’t be talked to in a fashion that would get them in trouble if they were to talk the same way to students, teachers shouldn’t be robbed of creativity and innovation and should never be told they can’t fail or discipline kids and those things happen daily across the district. The union however isn’t interested in those issues as much as they are in salary and benefits.
20. How will you build consensus and support in the community (as well as fellow Board members) around the work of the school district? Who do you bring with you to the table?
I have been a teacher for eleven years now; my solutions and ideas come from thousands of conversations I have had with hundreds of other teachers over the years. I bring the teachers to the table with me and if the board wants us to be successful it is time they started listening to them.
21. How you will you involve the JAX Chamber if you are elected to the school board?
I think the Chamber would be a very valuable resource especially as we develop more technical and career academies. We also need mentors, internships and business partners. Education is an economic issue. If our schools were doing better we would attract more businesses, more jobs and overall wages and profits would increase too. In many ways our education system has held our city back. It is way past time we headed forward.
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