Age: 48
\nOccupation: Retired Computer Engineer<\/p>\n
How long in Wake County? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Since 1962<\/p>\n Do you have children in the district? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n No<\/p>\n Why have you decided to run for office? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Wanting to give back. My career in computers and information manage\u00adment as well as manage\u00adment itself\u2014I got to see a lot of statistics and got to see how corporations as well as government entities did well and didn\u2019t do well and the more I saw about the school board and the more I saw about educa\u00adtion, I figured this would be a good place to apply.<\/p>\n What do you think are the best and worst decisions the current school board has made? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n If you talk to anybody who knows me, I don\u2019t tend to look backwards a lot unless it comes to learn\u00ading from things. I\u2019m a lot more interested in where we\u2019re going with the school board than where the school board has been.<\/p>\n Parents need to feel like their voices are being heard. Likewise, if a deci\u00adsion comes out that doesn\u2019t please everybody \u2014 and I don\u2019t know what decision ever has really pleased ev\u00aderybody on a school board \u2014 you need to make sure that you\u2019re up front and honest with everybody. That way, they at least trust you, even if they don\u2019t agree with everything.<\/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 The third district is quite spread out, like a lot of them are. We have a couple of different schools in our district that are ex\u00adtremely high in terms of socio-economic needs. The challenge isn\u2019t just for the schools and the teachers and the administration in trying to make sure that all the kids get challenged at their level and above. We also need to look at how do we zone the areas? And I\u2019m not just talking about school district zones, I\u2019m talking about Wake Coun\u00adty zoning. If we have an area that is really high in free and reduced lunch and if we\u2019re building hous\u00ading units in that area, then we don\u2019t want to keep ca\u00adtering to the same side of the equation. We need to balance that out. I know the school board doesn\u2019t make those decisions.<\/p>\n What do you think WCPSS should do to address the achievement gap? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n You can measure the achievement gap in Wake County. We have the num\u00adbers to show that. We also have the numbers to show that certain kids start at the same point but then they develop off of two dif\u00adferent al\u00admost par\u00adallel lines of develop\u00adment. So we see not only the perfor\u00admance gap but we see how it increases from grades 4, 5, 6 and on. That\u2019s as much data as we have now. In talking with Superinten\u00addent Tata, it\u2019s like he says, we need to drill down that data more. My question to him was, \u201cIs this some\u00adthing that\u2019s going to take five or 10 years or are you talking about coming up with ways of sampling and testing that we can actu\u00adally find out some stuff in a year or two?\u201d Until we have that data we\u2019re kind of shooting in the dark.<\/p>\n What are your ideas for measuring and improving teacher and student effectiveness in WCPSS? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n When you talk about the teachers and you talk about the students, I\u2019ll put it this way, the number one thing for any learning en\u00advironment is going to be safety and security. If the kids feel like they have a stable environment that they feel safe and secure in and the administrators feel the same way, profession\u00adally as well as physically, then we\u2019re going to have an environment we can grow in. When we don\u2019t feel safe and secure because we\u2019re changing districts ev\u00adery year and we don\u2019t know where to in\u00advest in our schools be\u00adcause we don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to be our schools in a couple of years, then that\u2019s like a child going through a divorce ev\u00adery couple of years. That\u2019s unacceptable.<\/p>\n Do you support merit pay for teachers? Why or why not? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I do support merit pay. It\u2019s the application of it that has stunk when you see how it\u2019s been used across the country. Merit pay is essentially reward\u00ading someone for doing a good job. That happens in the entire rest of the world. Why shouldn\u2019t it also hap\u00adpen in teaching?<\/p>\n How do you feel about the new student assignment plan that\u2019s shaping up? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I like it over the old plan that\u2019s for sure. Busing kids is obviously just a tool and not just a tool to mix up the kids across the community. That\u2019s not a good reason to do it. A good reason to do it is academic achievement. If a child wants to go to another district then they ought to have the ability to go to that other district. The parents should be able to have the choice in work\u00ading with that.<\/p>\n How do charter schools fit in to your conception of a healthy school district? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I think charter schools are a great idea. The reason for that is that every sys\u00adtem, even government sys\u00adtems, need checks and bal\u00adances. The charter school system is a way to pair it\u00adself with the public school system and show different teaching methods and try different things and then go with what works. If we don\u2019t then we just have one big monopoly and nobody is really watching it. Your money is never well spent in an area where there\u2019s no competition at all.<\/p>\n How would you address the issue of student discipline? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n You can take a really fine point on it and say, \u201cEv\u00adery child is different.\u201d And that\u2019s true. As far as a larger view of student discipline, the purpose of education is helping to equip our kids for their next level. Not the level of the politicians or the government or the bu\u00adreaucrats but for the kids. Kids are at different levels and some of them require different discipline. That\u2019s all there is to it. No one is going to learn in a situation where they don\u2019t feel safe and secure or stable. Get\u00adting back to that, that\u2019s the environment that we not only need to show to our kids, but make sure that our kids feel that. There\u2019s no way to have discipline in the classroom if the teachers aren\u2019t backed up.<\/p>\n What would you do to ensure that WCPSS has the funding to educate its students adequately? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Obviously, we can\u2019t just approve all the funding as the educational board. Otherwise, we\u2019d probably have 10 times the budget because we all love kids that much. One of the things that\u2019s an important part of the job is public per\u00adception. When people look at their tax bill and they see how much money goes to\u00adwards the educational side of things, including the building of the schools and everything else. Bottom line is there\u2019s a tremendous amount of people in Wake County that have no kids in the school system, yet they\u2019re paying the taxes. People need to know how much it means to a com\u00admunity for the kids to be well-educated, for them to feel secure in getting the best education possible and for them to be adding to the environment of the community. We need to let them know as we make the system better, we protect everyone\u2019s land prices.<\/p>\n What was your favorite subject in school? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Physics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Age: 48 Occupation: Retired Computer Engineer How long in Wake County? Since 1962 Do you have children in the district? No Why have you decided to run for office? Wanting to give back. My career in computers and information manage\u00adment as well as manage\u00adment itself\u2014I got to see a lot of statistics and got to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24024,"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\/8750"}],"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\/24024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}