Notes from the Q & A portion of the School Board Candidate ...
Notes from the Q & A portion of the School Board Candidate Forum at Arabia Mountain High School... JULY 19, 2012
Sent in by Cheryl Miller
I attended the DeKalb County School Board Forum at Arabia Mountain High last night, July 19. Here is a rundown of my notes. I did not attend the first half hour, but from what I have been told, I did not miss much.
The candidates were seated according to their district numbers along a long table on the stage in this very impressive auditorium. The audience totaled about 200 - 250 adults from various parts of DeKalb County. The PTSA from Arabia Mountain organized the event and were very gracious and friendly hosts. The school sits far off the main road and once you turn the corner and see the school, it is quite a sight. I don’t know what else to compare it to because I have truly never seen such a beautiful, new, very large high school with such a modern design. It was very impressive.
Any student who attends such a nice school should be very proud of it. Inside, everything was immaculate. The floors, walls and ceilings all shined like there were freshly buffed and polished. Everything inside smells new and the trophy cabinets and other display shelves are still empty or barely contain a thing as it appears they are still in the process of setting some things up or unpacking some boxes. Clearly, this is a new school with many modern conveniences. We appreciate the PTSA for the nice welcome they gave us and the refreshments they served afterwards while allowing the attendees to meet and greet the candidates up close.
It became very, very clear to me that there is a disparity in spending in our county, but the stereotypical beliefs that the south has nothing and the north is living in luxury was clearly NOT the case here. I felt a little sorry for my neighborhood school because even the smallest of things are not funded, like working locks for the stalls in the girls bathroom, or new bulbs to replace the old, flickering ones in the school clinic, or a working photocopy machine in the front office. I don’t necessarily begrudge the kids who are able to attend such an impressive school, I just wish that we did not have to force other kids to be schooled so far at the other end of the spectrum, no matter where they live. A happy medium for everyone would be better than handing out luxuries to some residents and depriving others of basics like toilet paper or working water fountains or smooth, unbroken sidewalks or playgrounds without poison ivy.
ON WITH THE SHOW…
Okay, on to the actual meat of the forum. There was a moderator seated below the stage area with a list of questions that had been submitted by the public (presumably). She would address certain questions to only a particular district and other questions to all the candidates. They were not obligated to respond and did not have to speak in any particular order. The current board members tended to jump in with the first answers and the candidates followed up on their comments. All of them were polite and seemingly pleasant and courteous to one another. Womack was his usual cranky self and did not like listening to anyone. He even scowled at some of the questions and often put his head in his hand to cover his expression as he looked down.
I forgot to bring my notebook inside, so I had to type notes on an I-touch which slowed me down a bit.
SUBJECT: HOW TO IMPROVE EDUCATION
Dr. Speaks - Parents should not have to leave the neighborhood school just to get a quality education for their child.
McMahan - Let me ask you this (to the audience) - if you knew you could get the absolute best, top notch, grade A quality education possible for your child at your neighborhood school, why would you ever leave? (silence) You wouldn’t. We need to provide the best education to our kids in our neighborhoods and we will not need all these specialty schools, with the exception of the DeKalb School of the Arts. (ramble about the girl from “So You Think You Can Dance…)
Orson - we need a great system, not just a scattering of a few great schools.
McChesney - doesn’t matter what we want, we can’t afford it.
Kinney - we need to evaluate what is working and what is not.
Womack - I vow to end all special programs in separate schools. This is my mission. I want to end all of them and then when we have quality schools we can maybe look at opening magnet programs for high achievers within each of our schools. A school within a school. The magnets were put here for a specific purpose and now that time is over. You should not have to leave your neighborhood to get something that we should be giving you at every school.
Rivers-Cannon: Schools within schools will keep teachers employed.
McGill - not in favor of canned education (big applause) We were brought up that way. Teachers would teach and you learned. We need to get back to that and I think our test scores would naturally improve.
SUBJECT: THE BUDGET CRISIS
Womack - $120 million did not get cut. We need transparency in our Finance Dept. The new Super. Has brought us an excellent finance guy. We just need to give him some time to get through the mess.
Rivers-Cannon - You cannot say you didn’t know. It is your job to know. I have looked at the Heery-Mitchell file myself. I looked up the details as a private citizen, so you can imagine what I will do if I get on this board.
Johnson - The Superintendent should have outlined more details about the budget before the board had to vote on it.
Kinney - I say, “trust, but verify.”
Speaks - You can’t verify or you will get sanctioned by SACS. They will say it is micromanagement. You can ask the hard questions (Like CBS Atlanta reporter Wendy Saltzman!!) but you cannot dig. (Audience is groaning because they do not believe this.) I know you don’t believe it because it sounds hard to believe. But, all I can say about that is this is the truth. And, you just DON’T KNOW. I’m sorry, but you don’t. (Audience sort of shocked by her harsh sounding attitude on this.)
** As an aside, it does seem rather odd that we, as private citizens can get information via Open Records, but our board members are suddenly limited in what they are allowed to know before voting on a subject. What kind of crazy rule is this and should SACS be consulted in case our board is misunderstanding their rules about this matter?
Gilbert - I think we need to hold the Tax Man accountable. You know all this talk about the housing market being down and that being a reason for not collecting the taxes that we need is not right. I don’t care if there are empty houses - someone is paying the tax bill on those things. They are not just sitting there without anyone being the owner of them. Even if it is the bank, the tax bill has still got to be paid. At Home Depot I just met a man who bought 100 some houses in South DeKalb and he’s fixing them all up and I know he has to pay the tax bill on all those homes. So, we need to make sure we are dealing with the right numbers because if you don’t have the right collection sums, your budget is not a real budget. It’s all funny money. If I have an airplane with 10 seats to sell and I tell you that I value them at $50 each. Well, I go out and sell only half of them, I can tell you that I lost $250, but I didn’t really LOSE that money. I never had it to begin with. I was just projecting that I would get that money, but it isn’t real. This budget is a big projection and they are playing games with the taxpayers to confuse you into thinking there is a crisis when there may be plenty of real money to go around. This is the kind of thing that I can bring to the table because we deal with these big numbers at Home Depot and we are very good at it. We will have a $74 billion income next year, but of course that’s just a projection. Personally, I think we can do better.
Orson - $37 million lawsuit. Blames budget. Blames board. (I thought these guys were all chummy? Wasn’t Orson the one pushing for SPLOST IV?)
McMahan - give the new CFO a chance. I will personally advocate for transparency at every level. You know there are only a few people who come to the budget meetings and other committee meetings, but if we could steam them online and archive them for you, then you would all be a lot better informed about what is going on and how decisions are made. You could get dinner, put the kids to bed and then sit down and play back whatever meeting you are interested in from your home computer and it would not be such a big deal if you miss a meeting here and there because you can look them up and play them anytime. And another thing, I want DeKalb County Schools to operate with and Online Check Register so you can see exactly where you money is going down to every last cent. (big applause from the audience. They really like this idea. Thanks DeKalb School Watch!)
SUBJECT: EFFICIENCIES AND WASTE LIKE ELECTRICITY AND WATER
McMahan: We need to eliminate many inefficiencies like lights being left on.
Speaks - what can we do about efficiencies for all departments? We need to hold the Superintendent accountable.
Rivers-Cannon - we need less administrative hoops to jump through.
Walker - schools need an open audit so we know where these inefficiencies lie. My advocacy team has uncovered a lot of waste and we need to put an end to it. You cannot fix what you do not know. Stop trying to cover it up and let these things out in the open so they can be fixed.
Gilbert - I don’t think the lights are any big deal. We leave lights on at Home Depot.
McMahan - well, maybe Mr. Gilbert can get his gracious employer, Home Depot, to give the poor schools in DeKalb County a good deal on some motion sensors for our lights since we can’t afford to leave our lights on. I think that’s obvious.
Orson - you need auditing and you need benchmarking studies.. You need to know the impact of things like Heery Mitchell.
McChestney – You love to talk about that.
Orson – I’m a lawyer.
ORIGINAL POST
Notes from the Arabia Candidate Forum
At the end of Arabia Mountain’s School Board Forum last night (July 19), the candidates were given about 2 minutes to tell the audience why they should vote for them. These are one of our regular contributor’s notes on what the candidates had to say about themselves.
Summary statements
District 8
Speaks – experience counts – if you want to continue the north/south or black/white battle then I am not the candidate for you. If you want a partnership to improve all schools, vote for me.
District 6
Johnson – experience counts. I know all the roles. I am a long time former employee of the school system. You have to know the roles – save the teachers, conflict management.
Rivers-Cannon – out of the box thinker, makes choices, I have walked in these shoes, make the change, blast off the change with Cannon.
McGill – endorsed by eduKalb and the Black Women’s Attorneys association. Inspire real change. Every child has potential to become that gifted student. You have a choice. You have to choose to make a change. Please vote for Denise McGill in District 6.
Walker – parent accountable. Preserve magnets. Look out of the box. If they can write RFPs for major cell phone towers with T-mobile, then they need to focus that kind of energy on forming good business partnerships with our local businesses right here at home and stop all that other stuff. I advocate for the rights of children in DeKalb. Take my ethics. Latasha Walker.
District 4
McMahan – thank you. Assumptions of attrition to balance budget. Need a sound budget so best case scenario we’re great but worst case is that we’re still friends. Can replicate what we have done in our community and take that system wide. Early intervention. Community support. I am out of time.
Womack – 15.5 years on this board. One crisis after another – moved education forward. You can believe that or not if you want to, but that’s what I’m telling you. This is a two year term – that’s the only reason I even offered. Tax digest will continue down so if you thought this year was bad, next year will be worse. Students are bedrock of our future.
Gilbert – you are a nice guy Womack, but… isn’t it time we get this crisis under control? I mean, really. I knew Womack in high school and he started out as a low achiever and then worked hard to be a high achiever and he was in that Bully Group. He was in a lot of groups and did real well for himself, but those times are past. This is now and we need to start giving a quality education for all our kids. It doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. Tom Gilbert/Home Depot. Vote July 31.
Kinney – Tuesday we shared a stage with waana-be’s. Wanna-be CEO, Wanna-be commissioner but when it was over, what did they do – they LEFT! We didn’t do that. We want to be accessible. So, I hope you all stay around after and talk to us. I for one will be here until the last person leaves. You have, what? 2000 students in school here? What, more like 1300? Okay, Okay. But, I took a count and there is only about 200 or 250 in the audience. That’s good for you because that shows you are involved and your kids will be alright. But, it’s the other 1000 or more we need to be worried about, isn’t it? I hope everyone shows up to vote July 31. I hope you vote for me, but if not, that’s okay, I might not be in your district. The important thing is that this type of thing, this election is too important to not vote… you have to vote.
District 2
McChesney – every board member has only one vote. So some of you can sit up here and sing Kumbaya and whatnot, but you still only have one vote on the board. So, big ideas are fine, but I hope you don’t seriously believe you will accomplish all that. I understand the schools from the inside. I know how kids learn. I was a teacher. A myopic view fails the children. Mr. Womack is correct when he said that we have raised achievement. He is right. We raised 125 categories on the CRCT.
Orson – this is about social justice. I’m a businessman. I’ve been in charge of large sums. I understand teachers, but I don’t think being a teacher makes you cut out for this job. I have the Educalb endorsement and that is really saying something. They look at all the candidates and they know who is the right one. My Mom was a teacher. Sure, teachers are one part of the equation, but so are parents. Parents are involved and I think I’m the only one sitting up here for this job that even has a child in the system (objections from other end of table, Walker, McGill, Rivers-Cannon, but he restates that he meant in District 2, not all districts).
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