Q: Why did you run for Kent County’s Board of Education?
A: I was involved as a parent and as a volunteer. I wrote a community survey that established a feedback system for the students. I think that I can help establish a systematic communication process that will help us move to a more fact-based governance so that it’s easier to measure how we’re doing.
Q: What has surprised you the most about being on the board?
A: How many rules and state requirements there are and how much effort it takes to satisfy them. And these are, many times, very complicated rules. Add in the many, onerous No Child Left Behind federal regulations and it’s very difficult to write local policies that reflect our rural agricultural based culture.
Q: What grade would you give the school district after your first semester?
A: Today… an incomplete. I’ll wait until the state testing scores come back. We’re anticipating the results with cautious optimism. Right now I’d say we’re at the back of the mid-pack (of equivalent school districts). The elementary schools are probably ahead of the average, the middle schools at the average and the high school a little below average.
Q: What’s the biggest problem that Kent’s schools face?
A: In order to save some important aspects of the system we had to cut deeply into our professional development budget. Time will tell whether this is a false economy. . .Next year’s budget will be even tougher than this year’s because of potential shortfalls in state funding and uncertain funding from the feds.
Q:What’s being done to correct any discipline problems at the high school?
A: Visit the high school and see for yourself. I care about orderliness and discipline in the classroom. It defines a class, a teacher, a school and a system. Yet there is this fear that this is just a code word for establishing a police state. It doesn’t mean that strip searches are the norm, but it does mean that an unruly student should not be allowed to intrude on students who want to participate in the learning process. This is what the Alternative School has allowed us to do. The troubled youths are separated so that they get the attention that they need to become a contributing individual to our school system.
Q: What did you think of the recent budgeting process?
A: It’s almost backwards from a typical business management budgeting process. It caused complications as we saw where the former board had committed to certain financial conditions for the teachers, and then the funding simply was not there to support
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