{"id":8765,"date":"2011-09-15T17:00:23","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T21:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raleighpublicrecord.org\/?p=8765"},"modified":"2011-09-15T16:28:43","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T20:28:43","slug":"kevin-hill-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/voter-guide-2011\/2011\/09\/15\/kevin-hill-d\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Hill (D)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Age: 57
\nOccupation: Teaching Assistant Professor, College of Education, NCSU
\nWebsite: www.hillforboe.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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

45 years<\/p>\n

Do you have children in the district? <\/em><\/strong>No<\/p>\n

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

I think it\u2019s important … that at least one mem\u00adber on that board has public school experience. I\u2019ve taught every grade 7 through 12. I\u2019ve been an assistant principal and principal at elementary, middle and high school. For the past five years, I\u2019ve been teaching at the Col\u00adlege of Ed, preparing stu\u00addents to be hired by Wake County Public Schools.<\/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

Budget, student assign\u00adment and growth. Budget: we have to continue be\u00ading as fiscally responsible as we can be. That\u2019s where I think being an educator can help with the decision-making process. It seems obvious to people that if you cut class size from 26 to 24, you have to make a corresponding cut with support. That\u2019s where they want to make the cuts, but that\u2019s not always the best for our kids.<\/p>\n

Right now, at least for the next six to eight months, we\u2019ve got to flesh out a new assignment plan. Looking at how we assign students to schools, I still believe that what a school looks like in terms of size and challenges does have an impact on teacher ef\u00adfectiveness and student achievement. Again, that\u2019s from an educator\u2019s per\u00adspective, and that\u2019s sup\u00adported by a boatload of research. Growth, assign\u00adment and budget are all tied in together.<\/p>\n

What do you think are the best and worst decisions the current school board has made? <\/em><\/strong>Best: We\u2019re trying to come together to work in the best interests of our students. As a board we have tried to work with staff \u2026 to try and manage not having any money. Some of the decisions we\u2019ve made as a board on how to utilize our funds or direct resources, I think we\u2019ve had some consensus on that.<\/p>\n

Worst: I still feel it was a mistake to remove col\u00adlaborative planning time for our teachers. The re\u00adsearch truly shows that collaborative planning through schools is very effective.<\/p>\n

What do you think is the most important issue facing your district, and how do you plan to ad\u00address it? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Growth. In north W a k e , northeast\u00adern Wake, in District 3 into parts of District 1, right now are just really s tretched with capac\u00adity. I think it\u2019s most ex\u00adaggerated in terms of having too few seats at the elementary lev\u00adel, about 1,800 seats in def\u00adicit right now [for 2015]. We need to try to get some early start schools going. That bubble is just going to follow from middle school up to high school.<\/p>\n

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

We\u2019ve got to provide more, not less, training for our teachers. If you look at all of the various sub\u00adgroups and you start to disaggregate the data, we\u2019ve got a lot of different gaps we\u2019ve got to look at and all sorts of different solutions. The common denomina\u00adtor is that you\u2019re going to have to have teachers that are well trained and well supported.<\/p>\n

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

I think we have the tools already, between the ABCs [state tests] and No Child Left Behind, which I think will either go away or be substantial\u00adly modified ,because I don\u2019t look at AYP and the la\u00adbels that it places on schools seriously.<\/p>\n

R i g h t now North Carol i na is one of 46 states participat\u00ading in the Common Core Standards. They necessi\u00adtate that states assess their kids with summative as\u00adsessments and tie those as\u00adsessments to progress being made a little bit differently than AYP.<\/p>\n

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

I really don\u2019t. I\u2019ve seen it be very divisive when it was given just to a school and then distributed amongst the teachers or given to in\u00addividual teachers.<\/p>\n

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

First of all, I think that as a district we need to con\u00adtinue to position ourselves to be recognized as one of the leading districts in the country so then people will want to come here. Second, we need to continue to re\u00adcruit at the HBCUs.<\/p>\n

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

To be perfectly honest, I have not seen anything as\u00adsociated with the assign\u00adment plan since it was pre\u00adsented in June at the board table. There\u2019ve been no up\u00addates since staff has been working on it. So the staff and the superintendent were pretty much given a directive to go ahead and put together a student as\u00adsignment plan.<\/p>\n

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

I think there\u2019s a role that charters can play, and I think the General As\u00adsembly was on the right track early on when they said, \u201cAll right, we\u2019re go\u00ading to lift the cap on char\u00adters, but charters have to represent and look like the communities in which they serve,\u201d similar to the public schools. But when they finally lifted the cap on charters, that was not included. So they still do not have to offer transpor\u00adtation or provide free-and-reduced lunches or even provide, by requirement, special education.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe in the whole concept that char\u00adters provide competition for public schools and bring the public schools up.<\/p>\n

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

I think it needs to be ongoing. This is the first major revision we\u2019ve had in very many years of our discipline policy. I think we did look at research and did look at data. One of the things that was mentioned \u2014 at the second meeting in June \u2014 was that we need to form \u2026 a committee for an ongoing look at the dis\u00adcipline policy. I think that would be a good idea.<\/p>\n

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

We need to continue to push the county commis\u00adsioners. I\u2019ve made several comments this past spring, one in a meeting with the commissioners, that I must not be a politician because I would vote to raise taxes.<\/p>\n

The schools are the driv\u00ader of our economic engine in Wake County, educat\u00ading the future of Wake County.<\/p>\n

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

Social studies. That\u2019s what I taught \u2014 politics, government, economics. Math is important, science is important, but social studies is the discipline be\u00adcause it\u2019s the building block of all the other disciplines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Age: 57 Occupation: Teaching Assistant Professor, College of Education, NCSU Website: www.hillforboe.com How long have you lived in Wake County? 45 years Do you have children in the district? No Why have you decided to run for office? I think it\u2019s important … that at least one mem\u00adber on that board has public school experience. […]<\/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\/8765"}],"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=8765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}