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CMS District 6 Board Of Education Candidates Share Their Views

Ardrey Kell High School in District 6

The election for Charlotte Mecklenburg's school board will take place on Nov. 7.  There are six seats up for grabs in the district with incumbents seeking re-election in three of them. WFAE sent a list of questions to all of the school board candidates about their backgrounds and thoughts on a few issues the district is facing, including student assignment and school bonds. 

Here are their responses. Some were edited for brevity:

DISTRICT 6

Allen Smith

Occupation: Software developer of educational materials; former teacher and adjunct instructor

Credit submitted
Allen Smith

  

Have you ever held or run for an elected office?

No.

 

What will be a top priority for you if elected?

I want to improve the collaboration between the board and other governmental bodies, community organizations, and the community. I believe this will help us tackle some of the big interrelated challenges our community is facing such as overcrowding, equity, affordable housing, and empowering teachers.

 

What is your position on the bond issue and why?

I support the bond. It is an important investment in our schools, and it helps ensure we’ll have the educational infrastructure to support our growing community. I acknowledge there are some opportunities to improve the process for selecting and prioritizing projects so that future bond requests are equitable and so that the overall process is more transparent. 

 

What is your position on the student assignment plan?

I believe CMS needs to start thinking about a long-term solution to student assignment that will allow our school system to be more responsive to the needs of individual families. I believe we should continue building on the success of our school options such as magnet programs and taking care to ensure that all students have a fair shot at benefiting from these opportunities.

 

What do you think needs to happen to make CMS schools more racially and economically diverse and improve low-performing schools?

I believe shifting to a more flexible student assignment model would help bring more racial and socioeconomic diversity to all schools. This approach would also help reduce concentrations of poverty in schools, which helps ensure no student, teacher, or administrator has the deck stacked against them because of factors outside of their control. Working with other government agencies to emphasize the importance of bringing affordable housing to all parts of the county would also help address some of the geographic homogeneity that contributes to racial and socioeconomic segregation in many of our schools. 

 

Sean Strain

Occupation: Client Executive with a technology company

 

Credit submitted
Sean Strain

  

Have you ever held or run for an elected office?

No

 

What will be a top priority for you if elected?

I want to re-double our focus on the mission to maximize academic achievement by every student in every school. I want to work with the superintendent to ensure that we have appropriate metrics to measure this and ensure that policies being considered tie back to and ultimately show their value through positive movement of metrics aligned to that mission.

 

What is your position on the bond issue and why?

I support the bond referendum. The district needs $2.2 billion for capital needs over the next 10 years. The bond is long overdue, as over three-fourths of our schools are overcrowded and quite a few are crumbling. Given that and our growth, the bond plan is long overdue.

 

What is your position on the student assignment plan?

Every student deserves a strong school, close to home, that is the pride of the community. Neighborhood schools are foundational elements of a strong community. That said, regardless of the student assignment plan we must work as a community to ensure that every child is also prepared to excel when they arrive at the school.

 

What do you think needs to happen to make CMS schools more racially and economically diverse and improve low-performing schools?

Our schools in low-income communities have quite a challenge. We – our schools – must do better. When we talk about “failing schools,” that statement is a reflection not only of the aggregate view of student performance, but also of the individual students in the school. A student is not better prepared because they spend a much longer time on a bus, attending a different school. A student is not better prepared because we offer an AP course for which they are not ready to succeed. We have to do better from ages 0-5 to prepare our children to enter the public school system. 

Gwendolyn is an award-winning journalist who has covered a broad range of stories on the local and national levels. Her experience includes producing on-air reports for National Public Radio and she worked full-time as a producer for NPR’s All Things Considered news program for five years. She worked for several years as an on-air contract reporter for CNN in Atlanta and worked in print as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun Media Group, The Washington Post and covered Congress and various federal agencies for the Daily Environment Report and Real Estate Finance Today. Glenn has won awards for her reports from the Maryland-DC-Delaware Press Association, SNA and the first-place radio award from the National Association of Black Journalists.