The Times Union sent me a questionnaire and these were my answers. I also included links to the JPEF and Channel 4 questionnaires. Then if you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out, mrgfordistrict3@gmail.com
Times Union questionnaire
6. What ties/personal connection do
you have to Jacksonville and/or your district?
Times Union questionnaire
1. Age
52
2. Education
Bachelors
degrees in political science and psychology
3. Family status
Wife,
Julia Furber and four fur babies, Grrl, Rosemary, Penny and Elle
4. What's your pitch to people who
don't know you?
All
four people running for the District 3 school board seat have excellent
resumes, there is the volunteer of the year, the coach, the college president
and me, a 20-year teaching veteran and education activist. Since that is the
case, we have to see what sets us apart.
I
am the only public school teacher in the group, and the only one that can say
he has been actively fighting for our schools over the last 14 years. I have
written thousands of blogs, letters to the editor, and op-eds all about
education. These have been published on the blog Education Matters or printed
here in Jacksonville and around the state. I also frequently advocate at school
board meetings and also testified in the landmark fair funding lawsuit. I have
a unique perspective as someone who is not only in the classroom but who has
fought to improve things for our teachers, students, staff, and families.
Another
thing that sets me apart is what I have been willing to risk and give up. As a
writer, I often questioned, and when deserved was critical of former
superintendents and school board members, and much of this came when the
district sought to punish dissent. My career was threatened time and time
again,, and on several occasions, the district tried to intimidate and punish
me for my advocacy.
I had eight different classrooms in 8 years
and nearly as many different teaching assignments. Then one year, the district
broke its own rules and staffed ultra-violent students into my class of
intellectually disabled students putting them and me in danger. Still, I never
quit fighting for my fellow teachers and our students. It got to the point
where I had to seek legal action, and the district offered me 150 thousand
dollars to quit, but I refused. Whether it was a change in administration or a
realization that I wasn’t going anywhere, it was only in the last few years did
the harassment end.
Then
if elected, I will take a significant pay cut that I will never be able to
makeup, and I will give up my professional teaching contract, what some people
called tenure, as well.
Those
aren’t the only things that set me apart. As I said, all the candidates running
in district three have great resumes, and my interactions have all been
positive. They genuinely seem to care, but two of them are relatively new
residents to Jacksonville, one having moved here five years ago while the other
returned here after a twenty-year absence also about five years. While the
third is doing their third campaign, two for the city council and this one, in
the last four years. Compare that to me, who has been in the classroom for
decades and singularly focused on improving education and fighting for public
schools and the teaching profession.
If
elected I won’t need time to get acclimated, I will show up with many more
solutions than questions, and because of my writing, I will bring information
and transparency to the city that it has never seen before, and that is long
overdue.
5. What's the moment you knew you
had to run? Describe this for readers.
I
have a great job at a school I love where I work with a fantastic staff and
wonderful students. Before I decided to run, I felt perfectly content to spend
the rest of my carer there. I have also been advocating for the teaching
profession and public schools, so I already felt like I was contributing and
playing a role. Then as the pandemic hit and it became hard to find the other
candidates’ positions on the issues, I started to get nervous. How do they feel
about privatization, testing, electing pro-education candidates, and so many
other issues, but most importantly, what did they think about keeping people
safe?
If
you go to my website, you will find fourteen years’ worth of positions on the
issues, but with them, I could only find out about what they had done not what
they stand for or want to do. Eventually, my nervousness manifested into the
fear that they would not fight for the things I felt important, which first and
foremost, right now is keeping people safe. So with some reluctancy realizing all
I would have to give up, I decided to run.
I
decided why hold out hope that any of them would fight for things I find
essential when I could do it myself and that by adding school board member to
my resume of teacher, education writer, and activist, I could accomplish even
more.
Then
when I decided to run, people told me not to take to strong of a position on a
lot of issues and no opinions on anything that could prove controversial. I,
however, decided to run like I am not seeking any votes; that way, I could be
completely honest at all times. I wouldn’t have to hedge or equivocate, or
dodge issues for fear of losing any votes, you can get that elsewhere. This
choice has allowed me to be completely honest at all times about every issue.
I
moved here when I was seven and went to DCPS schools until I graduated from Ed
White in 1986. I eventually attended and graduated from UNF, and I have lived
at my residence in district 3 for seven years.
7. What ties/personal connection do
you have with education?
I
went to and graduated from DCPS schools. I spent one year as a
paraprofessional, and I will be starting my 20th year as a special needs
teacher in a few weeks. I write extensively about education issues in the blog
Education Matters. I have had hundreds of letters to the editor and op-eds
published in the Folio, Times Union, and other papers throughout the state. I
often advocate at school board meetings and testified in the landmark Fair
Funding for Education trial. Then I regularly pitch education ideas to the
local media, and, over the years, have helped with more than a few.
8. What's the biggest issue in your
district?
The
biggest issue facing District 3 and every district is what to do with COVID-
19, how to keep people safe and educate at the same time.
If
there weren’t a pandemic, I would say equity. There are some schools in
district three that don’t want for resources while others are scraping by. We
must, for lack of better words, bridge the equity gap.
9. How do you feel the school board
has handled the back-to-school plan?
I
think we have to acknowledge how we are in unprecedented times. That being
said, I believe the district has bungled their response, and their plan puts
people in danger and will inevitably lead to schools closing.
Everyone
should have been put into Duval Homeroom first, and then if they wanted to opt
into going into the schools, they could have. Keeping people safe and slowing
the spread of the pandemic should be the district’s top priorities. That’s not
to say the district shouldn’t do anything for working families and families
with children that truly need to be in school. Teachers and Boardmember Willie
have also offered solutions that would help with working families, ESE
students, and other students that are in danger of falling through the cracks, solutions
that have gone ignored.
Then
Warren Jones said he would like us to go to online learning before
backtracking, saying the district couldn’t get resources to students in time.
Perhaps he and the district should have thought about that when they spent 4
million dollars on plexiglass dividers just one month ago. The money would have
been better-utilized buying laptops and upgrading our digital infrastructure.
Things I might add we will still need once the pandemic is over. There are
safer solutions than opening schools that the district is ignoring.
I
look at the Florida Marlins as a cautionary tale. Major League Baseball did a
lot more than the district is doing and has unlimited resources, something the
district does not have and they were forced to shut down after four days. How long will it be before the first school
has to?
I
also think we should acknowledge that distance learning did not work great for
some, but I can’t help but wonder how much better we could have made distance
learning if we would have spent the last two months improving it.
Finally,
I want to say everyone wants to be back, we all think that is the best thing,
but right now it is just not safe. It is not a matter of if but when and how
many schools will inevitably have to close, which means we will have risked
lives for what.
10. What are your thoughts on the
half-cent sales tax?
I wrote about the need for a half-cent sales
tax back in 2010 when the state first started to starve the district of
resources. I reasoned if the state were going to abdicate its responsibilities,
perhaps the citizens of Jacksonville would be willing to pick up the slack. So
I think it is needed and has been needed for a long time.
Continuing, we should all be outraged by what
happened last summer when the mayor and much of the city council fought against
the sales tax preventing it from being on the ballot last fall. This purposeful
delay gave Tallahassee the time to change the laws and now the district will
lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars that will go to the owners of
charter schools instead. Because of the lax rules, the money will flow into their
pockets and then out of town. Make no mistake much of that money will not go to
improving schools but instead to improving the bottom lines of bank accounts.
Many of these owners are also large donors to the mayor and city council.
Imagine if we would have passed the half-cent sales tax last fall. All the money would be going to
dozens of projects that would have created hundreds of jobs that we could use
right now.
As outrageous as this is, there is a solution.
We need to elect pro-education candidates like Ben Marcus, Angie Nixon, and
Joshua Hicks and send them to Tallahassee to change the laws so in the future,
the money goes into needed infrastructure and not the pockets of wealthy
donors.
Furthermore, if education was a three-legged
stool and one leg represents our deteriorating infrastructure the other two
legs may be able to keep the stool up. Unfortunately, it is not the only leg
that is in trouble in Duval.
Duval’s teachers are some of the lowest paid
in a state that already doesn’t pay it’s teachers well and don’t let the
governor’s announcement of a pay raise fool you. The reality is it was as close
to nothing as you can get, and tens of thousands of veteran teachers will see a
pay cut. Teachers do not become teachers to get rich, but teachers’ salaries
have regressed over the last decade. A teacher on the same step as me before
the great recession made about ten thousand dollars more than I make now.
Veteran teachers are out billions of dollars. That is billions in mortgage and
car payments and spending that the state has also missed out on. So teachers
are underpaid at the same time many of our support staff aren’t making a living
wage and aren’t. Why would somebody choose to be a para or a secretary for DCPS
when they can make more money working for Amazon.
So it’s not just our infrastructure that we
have to address, but how we treat our employees as well.
JPEF
Channel 4
I hope you are elected. Good Luck!
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