Months away from the November election where two seats on Hillsborough County\u2019s school board will be on the ballot, candidates discussed a range of issues from literacy rates to school safety at March\u2019s Tiger Bay Club meeting, held Friday at The Cuban Club.<\/p>\n
Tiger Bay, a nonprofit political forum, invited all candidates running. District 2 candidate Brittany Lyssy was the only member not present.<\/p>\n
Here are what the candidates had to say on a few hot-button issues. Answers have been edited for brevity.<\/p>\n
Money from Bill Gates?<\/p>\n
As school board members, would they accept $100 million from, \u201csay, the Bill Gates foundation to raise the salaries of teachers, which is desperately needed,\u201d or would they turn it down unless they had the resources to sustain the expectations?<\/p>\n
That question came from Ron Weaver, a retired Tampa lawyer, referring to a debacle that has long plagued the district after they accepted a $100 million grant in 2009 that came with added costs.<\/p>\n
Chris Taylor, District 2: \u201cTeacher attrition is the biggest problem that we have. We have to find a way to, one, recruit great teachers, but then two, retain. And the problems with education are not just economic. We actually have a structural problem. If I\u2019m a great classroom teacher and I want to get promoted, that promotion usually leads me out of the classroom and out for being in front of students. We have to understand this, and we have to think out of the box for a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kenneth Gay, District 6: \u201cIf we\u2019re not going to support teachers, nothing else will work. We have issues related to discipline. We need to do everything we can to make certain that they are being provided the opportunities to reach out, to make certain that they are networking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniela Simic, District 2: \u201cIt needs to be sustainable. When we do quick fixes, there are schools we may see jump in improvement, but then it jumps back down. So it\u2019s a difficult question to answer, because yes, we all want to support our teachers, but how can we do that in the long run?\u201d<\/p>\n
Sally Harris Williamson, District 6: \u201cI absolutely would study it, research it and would not probably accept that funding unless we could sustain it going on. Yes, our teachers need salary. Yes, they need promotional abilities to be a teacher and continue to stay in the classrooms. We have so many great teachers, and they have to get out of the classroom to be able to make more money, and that\u2019s why they leave. But we have to do something to build the respect back for our teachers. Our teachers used to be honored.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen Perez, incumbent, District 6: “A lot of teachers that I\u2019ve spoken with throughout the years, they love what they do. A lot of them don\u2019t speak about salaries. They speak about what they went to school for, what their passion is about, teaching, and being able to engage with the students in the classroom without any distractions. We need a lot more parent engagement to really support those teachers in the classroom, to elevate that education.”<\/p>\n
Superintendents on the ballot?<\/p>\n
On at least one controversial issue, the candidates were aligned.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would appear that we may have a ballot measure this election season to elect the superintendent of the school system,\u201d Kim Droege from the Tampa Bay Arts and Education Newtork said. \u201cDo you think the superintendent should be elected, just like you?\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez: \u201cWhen I first was elected in 2018, our budget was $175 million in the red. Look where the budget is today. We are in the black and (our schools have a), 93% graduation rate, the highest it\u2019s ever been. Look at where the focus is of this superintendent, how he\u2019s moving this district in the positive direction. If you elect the superintendent, put that on the ballot, the superintendent will be more focused on getting re-elected than he is on the students, on the district, on the progress of the schools and moving our district forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williamson: \u201cWhen you run for office, you know how hard it is. You know what it takes, and it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of money, and when a superintendent is out there trying to run for office, at least one year of his time is going to be trying to get reelected. Then there\u2019s also the point that asks, who\u2019s going to ask to replace him if he\u2019s not doing the job? If the budget isn\u2019t balanced, if the money is being moved around to hide some money, who\u2019s going to pay attention to that? Because the school board can\u2019t fire, only the governor can fire them. So it\u2019s a really tough situation to be in. I totally support an appointed superintendent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simic: \u201cOur school system as it is right now has already started to become too political. Having another politician at the helm, I don\u2019t see that as doing any anything beneficial for our students and our teachers. Right now, we have seven elected members who represent various voices throughout the community. We are the seventh largest district in the nation. When you\u2019re dealing with an education system as large and complex as ours, you need someone who understands what it\u2019s like to go through that, to be an educator, to be a school leader.”<\/p>\n
Gay: \u201cThe superintendent should be appointed. I think there\u2019s too much of a mix of politics in the buildings. We need more professionalism, and that comes with a wise superintendent that has a background of education. They need to have an understanding of curriculum and instruction. We understand that sound instruction comes from grounded standards. They need to be academically rigorous. They need to promote problem solving, reasoning, critical thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taylor: \u201cWould you think it was ridiculous if we decided that the CEO of Tampa General had to be elected and be a politician? Can you imagine if we said, \u2018Now you\u2019ve got to go and spend 60% of your time every fourth year, you can\u2019t be running your hospital, and you\u2019re going to have to go raise money?\u2019 The school district is the largest business entity in this county. Imagine when he needs money to be elected. A developer says, \u2018Hey, here\u2019s $500,000 to put into a PAC. And oh, by the way, we want to buy Jefferson High School from you next year.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
What about removing books?<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it your job, or the responsibility of the state of Florida, or is it the parents\u2019 responsibility of what their school age children read?\u201d Joseph Citro asked.<\/p>\n
Taylor: \u201cI am all for parents being able to decide what their child needs. What I am not all for is some parent deciding what my child needs, or some non-parent, somebody who has no connection to the school or may not even live in Hillsborough County, coming and deciding what can be read and what can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simic: \u201cI believe that the majority of the professionals in our school system care deeply about our children. We have a policy in place that the school board has created to review the books that are challenged. The members that take part in that are teachers, community members; we have media specialists when the books are reviewed. I deeply believe in local control, and I appreciate the policies that the board has created.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gay: \u201cReading is a gateway for the world. It provides opportunity for children, for every one of us. But, you know, sometimes we open doors that we shouldn\u2019t open. Sometimes we open doors that expose children to things that are harmful. We want to make sure that we have our children comfortable, and making certain that they are not exposed to those things that are dangerous. I will not be an advocate for anything that harms children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williamson: “I support parent choice on what the students read. I do feel that our system in place in Hillsborough County is a very strong system. But I also am aware that there was a hiccup in that system in the last couple of years. There\u2019s books that slipped through, and everybody\u2019s aware of that, so I think that we need to reevaluate the system and maybe do a better job of making sure the proper books are available, and make sure that the books that with pictures or words that can\u2019t be read publicly, don\u2019t get bypassed into our public schools.”<\/p>\n
Perez: \u201cWe have an amazing process in place, and we have a community that voices their opinion. We go by that, and we honor our community knowing what they want for their children.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Months away from the November election where two seats on Hillsborough County\u2019s school board will be on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[113,276,99,135,137,136,7331,61522,95433],"class_list":["post-208410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-education","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-politics","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-teacher","tag-the-cuban-club","tag-tiger-bay-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}