Candidates for Guilford County School Board: McKinney, Alexander and Hawkes

At-large candidates for Guilford County School Board Michael McKinney, Sandra Alexander and Alan Hawkes debated at the Greensboro Historical Museum on May 1. Along with EC Huey and David Crawford, the three are vying against each other to replace outgoing at-large member Dot Kearns, who chose to not run for reelection. Two of the candidates will advance to the general election in November after tomorrow’s primary.

McKinney and Alexander said they supported a proposed $412.3 million school bond, while Hawkes said he remained undecided. McKinney and Alexander proposed a variety of ways to pay for school construction should the bond fail.

McKinney: “I hope it don’t fail because I’m a supporter of it, and our kids need it. In the event that it does, however, I think that the board of education has to step back and do some operational assessment to ensure that we are operating in an efficient manner and are not wasting our taxpayer monies excessively by having an overlap of positions and an overlap of programs. Secondly, we have to look at alternatives… and that is we turn to looking at builders who are experts in the industry at possibly building our facilities. And the way that would work is – I’ve seen it work at HBCUs in the past, where they deed over a plot of land to the developer, and they will build a facility and lease it back to the institution, and the institution would lease it over a period of time. The developer would share a small percentage of the net income with the lessee. And after ten or fifteen years the ownership would revert back. Now the way that would work is the district would have to have its own revenue, which means I think we would have to look at the possibility of the district having its own taxing authority.”

Alexander: “I too am a supporter of the school bonds, both of them. Rebuilding Eastern Guilford High School is a no-brainer; we simply must do that. But I also support the second bond as well, because I’ve been in and out of our schools, and I see many of them are dilapidated. Many of them are badly in need of repair, and so we do indeed need the school bond. I’ve thought long and hard about it, because I know there are segments of our community, which do not support the bonds, but I reasoned that if we can spend $12 billion per month on a war halfway around the world, then surely we can invest in our schools. If, indeed the bond fails, I think we should begin to examine why it has failed, and try to build relationships with those segments of the community that feel that they are unfairly treated when it comes to receiving the benefits of the bond. And we all know who that segment of the community is. We should seek federal funding to help us with our capital improvement problems, and we should develop relationships with private developers in order to meet our needs.”

Hawkes: “I acknowledge that the need is great for capital expenditures. I have a major problem, first of all, that there’s such extravagance. We can see that out at Northern High School. This school board seems to be obsessed with buildings…. It’s an issue of equity, in my opinion. The dollars should be spent more equally around the county and around southeast Greensboro. That said, it’s not the building itself that actually makes a learning experience; it’s what’s going on in that classroom. My preference is putting the resources in the classroom, giving the teacher control of the classroom, helping these children learn to read and write. It’s not how beautiful the building is; it’s what’s going on in that classroom and how those children are getting that true sense of joy and accomplishment when they can read and write.”

McKinney and Alexander said they believe that students of color and poor students benefit from attending schools balanced along racial and socio-economic lines, while Hawkes said diversity is important, but not a paramount social good.

McKinney: “As a former diversity trainer for a national bank, absolutely they benefit. We’re living in a global society, and we are moving towards a global economy, and we need to be able to teach and equip our children to be prepared to deal with that global society. I think it’s important that our teachers, our staff, our administrators all attend a diversity training, if they have not done so, and I think we need to monitor to ensure that everyone, regardless of their differences are respected because of their differences. I remember hearing someone say, ‘We have to continue to work on our differences until differences make no differences.’ I have found that children from challenging socio-economic backgrounds are in need to exposure to a more diverse school environment.”

Alexander: “My answer to that is that all children benefit from being educated in a diverse environment. Ideally, I would like to see our schools reflect the larger society. If students are going to have to work and operate in a diverse society as adults, they can best do so if they’re trained to do so while they’re young. And our schools are the very best place to do that. I too believe in the value of diversity training. I think Guilford County Schools have moved in a positive direction with regard to that, by hiring a diversity officer, and I think that person has made a great deal of difference in our schools. This is a world that’s going to be radically different from the one that we have experienced. Our students are going to be competing not just against folks from the other side of Guilford County, but with students from around the world, and the earlier they begin to experience competition with persons who are very different from themselves the better we all will be.”

Hawkes: “I agree that diversity is a desirable aspect of education, but it’s trumped, at least initially, by other factors, including accomplishment. Diversity in elementary school is great, but if you’re coming out of elementary school and you’re not reading and writing at grade level and you’re not doing your math at grade level, you’re not going to be able to compete. I believe there’s something to be said for neighborhood schools, and giving children reading and writing and doing their math at grade level. And as they climb academically naturally they’re going to enter diverse and challenging environments. Diversity, just as a goal in elementary school, I think is trumped by resources to the classroom, good teachers and genuine achievement. Diversity for diversity’s sake, I think, does more harm than good.”

McKinney and Alexander said they support recommendations by the School Climate Task Force to assign a social worker to each school and reduce class size, while Hawkes remained noncommittal. McKinney discussed some options for paying for those initiatives, while Alexander took a pass.

Alexander: “Attending the School Climate Task Force meetings was how I became involved in wanting to pursue candidacy for the school board. These statistics [in the report] were appalling to me. I won’t go into them, but when only 42 percent of African-American males in North Carolina graduate from high school I begin to see the magnitude of the problem that we’re facing.

“I’ve read the document, and I believe that hiring a social worker and reducing class sizes are just two of the recommendations from the report, but they will not do the job. I think the most important recommendation to come out of the School Climate Task Force was the use of the positive behavior support initiative in all the schools in Guilford County. That’s a [state] Department of Public Instruction mandate. It suggests that schools reward students for doing rather than punishing them, dismissing them and suspending them for poor behavior. Guilford County has been slow to implement the positive behavior support initiative. And I have seen it work in other counties where the population is infinitely more diverse than our own, and I believe if we implement this program in every school in Guilford County we will see students behaving much better than they are today.

“The way it stands now, many of our students are in a vicious cycle of suspension, dismissal and readmission. And most of the students caught up in that cycle are of Hispanic and African-American descent. As long as that continues our schools are going to be chaotic. The behavior is not going to be modified so that teachers can teach and students can learn.”

McKinney: “I, too, agree with Sandra that I think smaller classrooms provide more direct attention to the students. I think a social worker at each one would be ideal. The question is how do you pay for it? When I look at the number of crimes that occur at Guilford County Schools in the year 06-07 and how the majority of those were related to the possession of substance or the possession of alcohol, or assault on school personnel that there’s some underlying issues that I think a social worker will be able to assist with. Now how do we pay for that? Again, we go back to surely it is a budget shortfall and there’s always been a need for additional funds to manage what we do, but we need to make sure that we are effectively managing what we have to make sure that we are not wasting money, first and foremost. Secondly, if an opportunity presents itself that professionals from the community that could lend their support, it might free up other revenue that we could use to support other initiative like the social worker and reducing class size and hire more qualified teachers.”

Hawkes: “One of the six points in my program is the expectation to children, clearly articulated, that they will succeed, and getting parental buy-in for those children’s education. Twenty-five years ago the Education Department issued a report called “A Nation At Risk” about our public education system. In the preamble to this report, it said, ‘If a foreign power inflicted our public school system on us, it would be considered an act of war.’ I wonder how much has changed in the last twenty-five years. In my view, we’re focused on smaller classrooms and we’re focused on a lot of issues other than what goes on in that classroom and making the children excited about learning…. The lower class size per se is not necessarily the answer; it’s getting that parental buy-in, it’s getting the expectation clearly articulated for our children that they can succeed, and pouring the resources into the classroom instead of building an extraordinary edifice in northern Guilford County. Show the children and the parents and the teachers at some of our poorer schools that they are valued too, but that the expectation is there.”