Three seats, eight candidates and a bounty of tricky issues define the May 2 election for the Durham school board.
Consolidated District A
Each of the Consolidated District A candidates-newcomers Larry Dixon, Michael Page and Carolyn Rogers-hopes to fill the vacuum left by outgoing member Rev. Phillip Cousin.
Page, a campus minister at North Carolina Central University and part-time substitute teacher, wants to give the school board his leadership and teaching experience.
"I have been a teacher in and out of the classroom and... I recognize the need for some good sound leadership on the board," he said.
Rogers is a Glaxo Wellcome computer programmer who hopes to create a quality school system for the children she and her husband hope to have someday. "I want my children to have the best education possible, and right now, that's not happening," Rogers said.
Dixon, Durham County's solid waste supervisor, said his 22 years of county government experience have taught him needed problem-solving skills.
Dixon, Rogers and Page all hope to address the growing achievement and performance gap between students of different races, partially by lowering the suspension rate for minority students.
One way Page hopes to address some of the needs of the students who are dropping out is to add more vocational education. "Not every student is college-bound," he said. Page also questioned why so many students are suspended. "Are students being suspended because they are disrupting class and the teachers don't have time to deal with it, or is this a behavioral problem?" he asked.
As a minority-Rogers is half-Hispanic and half-Pakistani-she said minority students' performance is limited by low expectations. "Some of the problem is that teachers and parents keep making excuses for the children and not expecting excellence," she said.
Dixon said heightened expectations will improve the suspension problem. He also proposes improving one-on-one tutoring system by tapping into the resources of local college students. Increased parental involvement in public schools is also important to him. "One way to get minority parents involved is transportation-they have no way to get to the schools," Dixon said.
Rogers believes it is important and feasible to increase teachers' pay, particularly by cutting excess costs. "Basically I feel that our teachers need to be better compensated for their efforts." She is a strong proponent of vouchers and anything that gives parents increased choice.
However, Dixon said vouchers demonstrate a lack of confidence in the educators, adding that vouchers take needed funds from the public school system.
Page is unsure of his position the voucher system.
Consolidated District B
The two Consolidated District B candidates-incumbent Phyllis Scott, who is director of Epworth Preschool, and Kelvin Bell, a real estate and construction manager-offer drastically different visions for the school board's goals.
Scott said the central priorities of the board should be to continue increasing standards, but that individual schools and teachers should have the freedom to decide how to attain those in the classroom.
Bell, however, believes that computer use in schools, along with technical and financial education, must be increased in order to advance Durham's schools into the 21st century. "Students get beat in financial areas not because they don't have the capabilities but because they don't have the education," Bell said.
Bell also introduced the idea of a charter or public school that would focus on technical skills as a way to prepare students for the information age.
Both Scott and Bell expressed the need to boost literacy for the youngest students, though they diverged on how to achieve that. Scott supports expansion of current programs, which include specialists who work one-on-one with struggling students, while Bell believes that technology can be used to teach reading skills.
The two candidates also disagree on school choice. Scott said she would strive to give all parents "as much choice as possible" via vouchers, charter schools and transfer within the public school system, while Bell said that although he does not strongly oppose vouchers, he would hesitate to institute them in Durham.
At-large
In the race for the school system's at-large seat, incumbent and board chair Kathryn Meyers and Lee Mortimer, a marketing publications writer for Nortel Networks, oppose the use of vouchers. Matthew Frank, a computer programmer with Electronic Data Systems, strongly supports vouchers, along with revamping the common voucher system.
"Right now, for a child to go to a charter school, the state will give only a fraction of what is given to the public schools for that child," Frank said. "The remainder stays in the public school system.... I'd like to see that the money follows the student."
Meyers, who runs a residential construction business with her husband, said she would like to foster more vocational education to "connect our students to 21st century jobs" and to serve the needs of non-English speaking children-a rapidly increasing population within the school system.
Frank said that along with vouchers, he would make community involvement a central focus of the board. He said he believes Durham schools could cut costs by soliciting resources and materials directly from parents and other community members.
Mortimer said he would push for the current district election system, where three seats are voted on by predominantly black districts and four by predominantly white, to be changed to a modified at-large system.
"The fundamental problem now is that no member needs to have cross-racial support to get elected," Mortimer said. He also cited sensitizing teachers to the cultural backgrounds of minority students as a central priority of his candidacy.
All the at-large candidates acknowledge the achievement gap between minorities and white students, though they differ on how to close that gap.
Meyers stated that having high expectations for all students was the key to addressing the gap, which she noted was greatest in Durham for kindergarten students.
"We're making great progress in Durham and we need to support and expand those efforts," she said.
Mortimer said that boosting recruitment of minority teachers and making educators more aware of minority needs would help bridge the gap, while Frank said that allowing minority parents the choice to place their children in private schools would address the issue.
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