Education Matters candidate project

If you have been following the races for school board you may have noticed they are long on rhetoric, every kid deserves a high quality education etc, but short on solutions. In order to rectify this Education Matters has started a candidate project. Below was sent to every candidate and their responses will be posted as they come in.

Jacksonville’s children and teachers and the city itself deserve solutions to our problems, not sound bites.

Chris

Hello all, I have a blog named Education Matters. It averages about 1100 hits a day and is linked to the Times Union’s web site. I have noticed during the campaigning process I have heard a lot of rhetoric but not many solutions to the issues facing our schools. As a result I was hoping you would all be willing to answer the questions below. I would then post it unedited without commentary on my blog under the title, 10 Education questions for, and your name. It would give the people of Jacksonville a chance to see your various solutions to the problems facing Jacksonville’s schools.

There is no time limit, word limit or deadline I will post them when I receive as pages on the blog so they are always on the front page for people to see when they visit the blog. However if I do not hear back from you I will write about that.

To make it more worth your while, I am also willing to publish three posts from you, unedited with the title of your choice between now and the election as well.

Chris Guerrieri
School Teacher


1. What do you think of grade recovery and would you make any changes to it?


2. What would you do to address low teacher morale?


3. Many of our underachieving schools serve neighborhoods that are wracked with poverty, what would you do to mitigate poverty in our schools?


4. Do you think teachers should be encouraged to pass kids without the skills they need or to ignore bad behavior, two common complaints that teachers have and if not what you do to ensure that doesn’t happen?


5. What do you think is the role Teach for America should play?


6. How would you go about seeing our best teaches are put in the schools with the highest needs.


7. What would you do to increase reading scores?


8. What do you think about the districts school site based management policy?


9. What do you think is the number one issue facing the county and how would you go about fixing it.


10. Is there anything else you would like to add or mention?