{"id":8761,"date":"2011-09-15T17:00:45","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T21:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=8761"},"modified":"2011-09-19T08:13:53","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T12:13:53","slug":"heather-losurdo-r","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/voter-guide-2011\/2011\/09\/15\/heather-losurdo-r\/","title":{"rendered":"Heather Losurdo (R)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Age: 40
\nCurrent Occupation: Parent
\nWebsite: www.heatherlosurdo.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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

Three years<\/p>\n

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

Two in middle school<\/p>\n

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

I\u2019m tired of sitting back and waiting for the per\u00adson to come in and do the things that I think need to be done to make Wake County schools the best they can be for our kids.<\/p>\n

What are the three biggest issues you think the Wake County Public School System faces? In 30 seconds or less, how would you address those issues? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously right now we\u2019re facing an assign\u00adment policy. I would come up with the most family-friendly, common-sense assignment policy, imple\u00adment it and focus on stu\u00addent achievement.<\/p>\n

Student achievement and growth, or lack there\u00adof \u2014 how I would fix that is take a look at proven methods and begin to im\u00adplement policy changes that will increase student achievement and growth. Achievement is what you show on paper. Growth is how far you\u2019ve come.<\/p>\n

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

Best:<\/p>\n

One of the best decisions is to end an assignment policy that had no proven data that it was helping any child. One of the best de\u00adcisions I believe they have made is the hiring of Su\u00adperintendent Tata.<\/p>\n

Worst:<\/p>\n

Not changing Wakefield Elementary back to a tradi\u00adtional calendar.<\/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

Again, I go back to the assignment policy. That may be in place by the time I get into office. And I\u2019ll bring it again back to stu\u00addent achievement. In the schools in District 3, I be\u00adlieve that we have resources in Wake County that we can be doing so much more for our kids than what we\u2019re currently doing: the businesses that we have here, the level of education that we have here, the phe\u00adnomenal parents that we have here. When you break everything down, I believe that everybody in Wake County wants to give our children the best that we can give them. Look at best practices, policies, systems, different things across Wake County, North Car\u00adolina, the United States, that ad\u00address un\u00adderachieve\u00adment, have proven re\u00adsults, and find out what pieces of that can we imple\u00adment in our school system to help our teachers be more effective, which in turn will increase student achievement.<\/p>\n

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

Think outside the box. And, again, I hate to keep repeating myself, but I go back to not reinventing the wheel. There are pro\u00adgrams out there \u2014 again, they don\u2019t have to be found in Wake County, but they might be \u2014 Wake County, North Carolina State, the country and beyond, into the world. But one of the very first things that you have to do before you can find a solution is figure out the real problem. Why is there such an achievement gap in Wake County? As diverse as this community is, why do we still see this great of a gap?<\/p>\n

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

Let me start by saying that EVAAS is a huge leap in that, in looking at value-added data. I would like to be able to use more infor\u00admation than just test scores for measurement. There are different factors in a s tudent \u2019s life and in a teacher\u2019s classroom, and there are differ\u00adent factors with every child. Ev\u00adery child is an individ\u00adual. I don\u2019t believe that full effectiveness of a teacher for student growth can be shown just based on a test score. There are a lot of oth\u00ader factors.<\/p>\n

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

Once we have a proven methodology of figuring out effectiveness, then yes, I do support merit pay.<\/p>\n

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

Quite frankly, I don\u2019t look at color of skin, and I can\u2019t wait for the day that we can get past color of skin and hone on effective\u00adness, how that teacher is going to affect the students in his or her classroom.<\/p>\n

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

I\u2019m glad they\u2019re working diligently on it. There\u2019s still not enough information. I have many questions that hopefully will be coming out shortly. When it be\u00adgins to be presented to the board and either for pub\u00adlic discussion or at least for the public to look at, then I\u2019ll be able to address at that point if my questions have been answered. But I do love the premise of the Blue Plan, and I love and will continue to advocate for it. What is the percent\u00adage that they\u2019re using of seats to be saved for Level 1 and 2 children? What are the logistics going to look like? What are the trans\u00adportation costs?<\/p>\n

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

Charter schools are a choice. Choice drives com\u00adpetition. Competition brings about innovation. I believe that Wake County should be proud of their charter schools and not see them as a threat. In look\u00ading at best practices that have proven results for is\u00adsues that we are dealing with here in Wake County \u2014 which there are many different issues \u2014 some charter schools have prov\u00aden results for some of the issues that we face, be they in Wake County, the state or the country. It is anoth\u00ader resource.<\/p>\n

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

That\u2019s a big issue. I don\u2019t think suspension is the an\u00adswer to every incident, but it is the answer to some. There needs to be tools for teachers who contin\u00adue to have disruptive chil\u00addren in their classrooms. Again, we need to figure out best practices in dis\u00adcipline. We need to figure out what works so that we don\u2019t continue to have re\u00adpeat offenders. Getting out of your desk when you\u2019re not supposed to or con\u00adtinuing to beat children up, anywhere in between, if the child continues over and over again to disobey the rules, there need to be consequences.<\/p>\n

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

If I felt as a board mem\u00adber that we absolutely did not have enough money \u2014 after researching every single line in the budget and seeing if the programs that we currently have da\u00adta-driven results \u2014 then I would rally up with the rest of the board members, come up with how much more we needed and why and lobby our county com\u00admissioners and our state legislators with factual data of why we need more money.<\/p>\n

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

It was not math. Histo\u00adry and physics, because of all the cause and effect of how we got to where we are today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Age: 40 Current Occupation: Parent Website: www.heatherlosurdo.com How long have you lived in Wake County? Three years Do you have children in the district? Two in middle school Why have you decided to run for office? I\u2019m tired of sitting back and waiting for the per\u00adson to come in and do the things that I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24030,"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\/8761"}],"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\/24030"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}