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CLEARWATER -- We continue with our series of stories and interviews on the School Board races in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties.
Three candidates are running to succeed the retiring Bill Dudley in Pinellas School Board District Six.
Stephanie Meyer grew up in Pinellas, where her mother taught school for 34 years. Following high school, she went into the sales and marketing field. Then she changed careers after 17 years, going back to college and then becoming a history teacher at Keswick Christian and Hillsborough Community College.
Meyer says one factor causing problems with teacher hiring and retention is discipline in the classroom. She says the system has a lack of deterrence for bad behavior and that's encouraged students to act up. She wants to improve discipline to help "students who are there to learn and teachers who are there to teach." Meyer say pay for teachers and support staff is also an issue. She says Governor DeSantis has done a lot to address the issue and she hopes the board will do more.
Since COVID and virtual learning, Meyer says a huge lack of trust between parents and teachers became very apparent. "I think we need to do more to make sure parents feel that they are directly involved" in their children's education. The former school volunteer says parents aren't as welcome at school campuses now, as they were in the past. "I felt that the parent-teacher relationshop has been diminished," Meyer said. "We need to invite parents back at the table so they can be a part of their child's education and be welcomed by the district"
Meyer embraces the dozens of bills passed by the Legislature addressing issues such as masks in schools, COVID protocols, and curriculum and library books. She says as long as the school boards implement legislation properly, there won't be an issue. "The main goal is transparency and accountability," Meyer says. "I don't think there is anything wrong with asking the district to be transparent and to be accountable to parents and taxpayers."
Meyer worked with a lawmaker on a bill in the legislature to prohibit school districts from hiding content on reproductive health. Before, parents had to go down and look at the material and couldn't take pictures. Now it's online on the PCS webstie. :"Miraculously, many of the... explicit materials that were in the curriculum are now gone."
Meyer expressed concern about the new superintendent's use of the word "equity" in a recent forum sponsored by the NAACP. "Based on Pinellas County Schools' own documents on their website," Meyer says, "equity centers around race. To me, it's important to make sure that we treat students as individuals."
Brian Martin is a father with four children in Pinellas public schools. He graduated from USF with a chemical engineering degree, has worked as a project manager for Fortune 500 companies, and describes himself as having a knack for solving complex problems. Depending on the outcomes or various races, Martin says he could become "the only dad" on the Pinellas School Board if he wins, and he plans to advocate for fathers getting involved in their children's education.
Martin wants to advocate for ESE students and improving mental health services. He praises the district for using a program developed by Sandy Hook Promise to teach students to be more inclusive so as not to develop the types of socially isoltated teens who occasionally end up becoming school shooters. He says teacher retention is the most important issue, and that between political divisiveness and low pay, teachers feel "attacked and underappreciated." Martin says the board should step up and show support for the teachers.
On equity, he says that means giving each student the resources they need to be successfu. He points to a program called Bridging the Gap that increased graduation rates among nonwhite students, although a gap remains on test scores.
On discipline, Martin says school safety is a concern, but there is also a concern that minority students account for half of out-ot-school suspensions and arrests, even though they're 18 percent of the school population. He says the district should keep discipline within the school system and don't "export" discipline problems to school resource officers and police.
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Kimberly Works was born and raised in Ohio, and moved to Florida in 2007. She placed her kids in school and started attending PTA meetings, then became involved in school advisory councils. She became an advocate for ESE after two of her sons were diagnosed on the autism spectrum. She remarried and her new husband told her she should run from the school board.
Works says parents don't feel they're being heard, "and that leads them to think something nefarious is going on."
She says one way to address the shortage of teachers is to attend more job fairs.
She says Pinellas students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and board members have to avoid one-size-fits-all solutions. She attended the forum on equity hosted by the NAACP in June and says "you have to ask, what does each particular school need? It could be money, resources and people", or even more time to get processes completed.
She says her top priorities are communications, supporting the staff, and and improvement in reading and literacy scores. "We have 6 D (schools) and 6 F's," Works said. Works is concerned that students have lost two years of socialization due to the pandemic, virtual learning, and social distancing.
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