What are your campaign focuses?
My focus is on teacher morale, fiscal responsibility and bring grades back to elementary school. This will require a leader who understands the importance of discipline, accountability, respect and trust. We must create a culture where every employee, and student, has the greatest opportunity to thrive. As a former business owner, city councilman and Marine, I know what effective leadership looks like and it starts with those four pillars. Removing grades and the reassessment policy is the opposite of accountability. As for fiscal responsibility, I was known as the most conservative member of council. I will always fight to reduce wasteful spending, lessening the burden on the taxpayer. I plan to do the same thing for FISD if elected.
Do you have children or grandchildren in the FISD system?
No. My wife and I both graduated from FHS in 1985, she was a 12-year senior and current teacher in the district. Both of my children graduated as 13-year seniors of the district.
What is your perspective on standards-based learning (SBL)?
I feel that we need to get away from SBL and get back to a traditional, proven grading system and curriculum. We know what works! Both of my kids were very well-prepared for college, and it was a result of the curriculum used in FISD prior to SBL.
What is your perspective on the current learning reassessment policy?
As I stated above, I feel that this is the opposite of accountability! I have no problem with a student retaking a test, once to receive as high as a 70. But, to retake to a test until you receive a 90 (Junior High) or an 85 in high school, is not teaching kids/young adults how to be successful in life. And they’re not getting away with that at the college level. College readiness is one of the assessments used to evaluate high schools. This policy is failure for our students and setting them up for real disappointment when they get to the real world.
What are your opinions on current teacher workload and pay?
With the advent of SBL and the idea of creating individualized instruction for every student, this has greatly increased demands on our teachers. It doesn’t help that because of our desire to be a district of innovation teachers now have more students to teach. That’s not fair to the teacher or the student. I’ve said before that teachers don’t teach for money. They teach because they are passionate about it. But we’re asking them to do so much more and rarely compensating them for their time. HB1 would have been the teacher pay raise bill, giving our district an 8% revenue increase per student and every teacher a $4000 stipend, but it was voted down by the democrats and a few republicans in Austin. My opponent testified against the teacher pay raise bill as a member, now president, of the largest leftwing taxpayer funded lobby group in Austin (TASB). HB1 was the largest PUBLIC education funding package ever proposed by the state. We could have used that money for teacher pay raises and to hire additional teachers where necessary, reducing class sizes.
What specific parts of the current FISD system are you hoping to change?
The culture. It starts with discipline, accountability, respect and trust. Once leadership has bought into those principles, teachers and students alike will flourish. I’m also hoping to bring back a more classical/rigorous curriculum.
What is your position on current bond initiatives for facility improvements?
I do believe that our facilities needed improvement and having the voters vote on it means that they felt the same way. I do have a problem however with the way that they were rolled out. The district never consulted with our own police department on the safety of the design. Nor did they consult with our fire department. I believe that it’s crucial to work hand in hand with our first responders. And to have to go back and make changes after the fact, to get a certificate of occupancy from the city, adds additional cost above and beyond what was budgeted. It’s easier and cheaper to do it right the first time.
