{"id":8674,"date":"2011-09-15T16:57:56","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T20:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=8674"},"modified":"2011-09-15T16:57:56","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T20:57:56","slug":"susan-evans-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/voter-guide-2011\/2011\/09\/15\/susan-evans-d\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan Evans (D)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Age: 53
\nOccupation: Accountant
\nWebsite: www.evansforwake.com<\/a><\/p>\n

How long have you lived in Wake County?\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>31 years<\/p>\n

Do you have children in the district? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I have two children who have recently graduated from Wake County Public Schools.<\/p>\n

Why have you decided to run for office? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always been really proud of Wake County public schools for all the ways they were forward thinking and continued to move our county forward as much as possible toward excellence for all students. Honestly, when the newest board majority was elected a couple of years ago, I just started hearing things that were concerning me. I\u2019ve been worried that the rep\u00adutation of our school sys\u00adtem is suffering as a result.<\/p>\n

What are the three biggest issues you think the Wake County Public School System faces? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The most difficult issue that we are continuing to face is how we best deal with the explosive growth that we have in Wake County. I really believe that our growth issues have driven the majority of the aggravations that have af\u00adfected families in the past couple of decades.<\/p>\n

I certainly believe improving student achieve\u00adment has to be extreme\u00adly top priority and I\u2019m very concerned about the achievement gap that we continue to have in our minority and less afflu\u00adent populations versus our more affluent populations.<\/p>\n

Beyond that I\u2019m in\u00adterested in bringing pro\u00adfessionalism back to the Wake County School Board and focusing on stu\u00addents and on running an efficient school system and removing politics from the discussion.<\/p>\n

What do you think are the best and worst decisions the current school board has made? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In particular my con\u00adcern with the current school board majority is that they\u2019ve made several decisions in a hasty fash\u00adion without proposing an alternative solution, and I just do not think that\u2019s the best way to conduct business.<\/p>\n

Positive things that the new school board has done. I know it has been their intention to feel that they were letting parents have a bigger voice, and I think that\u2019s a good inten\u00adtion. Now whether they\u2019ve been successful with that, I\u2019m not as sure, but I will say that I think that\u2019s a good intention.<\/p>\n

What do you think is the most important issue facing your district, and how do you plan to address it? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Growth is definitely the most difficult issue facing the southwestern part of the county. That has creat\u00aded the reassignment head\u00adaches that have disturbed so many families and I am very sensitive to that. Basi\u00adcally we also have to meet the needs of this c om m u \u00adnity which is a high\u00adly affluent c om m u \u00adnity, whose s t u d e n t s tend to be very high achieving and they sometimes feel like their needs aren\u2019t met.<\/p>\n

What do you think WCPSS should do to address the achievement gap? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the things that\u2019s been implicit in Wake County policies through\u00adout the last 30-plus years is that every child should have the right to equality in school regardless of the affluence of his neighbor\u00adhood, and I still believe this is very important to this county, that we con\u00adtinue to figure out ways to balance populations so that we do not have high concentrations of low-per\u00adforming students in cer\u00adtain schools.<\/p>\n

What are your ideas for measuring and improv\u00ading teacher and student effectiveness in WCPSS? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

While I know we have to have assessments and test\u00ading and that\u2019s an important component, I\u2019m concerned that we\u2019ve moved a little bit in the direction where that seems to be the only component and I think that\u2019s unfair to teachers. I\u2019d like to see more input from principals to see how they think their teachers are doing. I\u2019d like for par\u00adents to give f e edba ck on how the t e a c h e r s are doing. I don\u2019t think a teacher should be judged sole\u00adly on how his or her students are able to do on end-of-grade tests.<\/p>\n

Do you support merit pay for teachers? Why or why not? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not against merit pay for teachers. I guess I\u2019m more concerned about merit pay for teachers if it\u2019s based solely on end-of-grade tests.<\/p>\n

How do you think WCPSS should attract more minority teachers?<\/p>\n

I suppose they\u2019re do\u00ading the best job they can. They say they\u2019re going out to all the top universities to recruit the best they can, and I trust that they are, I know we have an awesome staff at Wake County pub\u00adlic schools, and I wouldn\u2019t have any advice on how to improve upon it.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about the new student assignment plan that\u2019s shaping up? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I would certainly say that it\u2019s the most optimis\u00adtic thing that we\u2019ve had in the last year and a half. I think that the controlled choice plan is a good mid\u00addle ground. What will be most important to me, and in the current framework for the plan it indicates the intention to not allow concentrations of low-per\u00adformance students and to allow students who would be in that situation to choose to attend a higher-performing school. If the controls are in place that will guarantee those types of measures then I think a controlled choice plan can work for our community for sure.<\/p>\n

How do charter schools fit in to your conception of a healthy school district? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s great to have all kinds of choices for fam\u00adilies. If the charter schools move in a direction where they are allowed to choose their population and we progress to the point where they just siphon off the higher achieving students out of the public school system, then I would not support a movement in that direction.<\/p>\n

How would you address the issue of student discipline? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a tough issue and I\u2019ve appreciated the fact that we are looking at the stu\u00addent suspension issue. I do think that there\u2019s this bal\u00adancing act to be had be\u00adtween when a student\u2019s be\u00adhavior is disrupting other students at the school and when it\u2019s just too punitive. If just keeping them out of school all the time is go\u00ading to set them back on a backward trail that can\u2019t be overcome, I would pre\u00adfer that we explore other options.<\/p>\n

What would you do to ensure that WCPSS has the funding to educate its students adequately? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Well I certainly am not afraid to advocate and go to the county commission\u00aders when necessary and plead for as much funding as we can possibly get. I was disappointed that this past spring the current majority decided not to do that. Be\u00adyond that we have to look very seriously at how we prepare for our growth and I think that we\u2019re going to have to be prepared for a bond referendum and we need to be getting the com\u00admunity prepared for that.<\/p>\n

What was your favorite subject in school? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It was probably math. I\u2019m a very logical think\u00ader, I always liked solving puzzles, loved algebra and probably why I became an accountant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Age: 53 Occupation: Accountant Website: www.evansforwake.com How long have you lived in Wake County?\u00a0 31 years Do you have children in the district? I have two children who have recently graduated from Wake County Public Schools. Why have you decided to run for office? I\u2019ve always been really proud of Wake County public schools for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24042,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[378],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}