Barbara Fedders, candidate for Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education
Voters who live in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools district will fill four open seats on the Board of Education in November.
Incumbent board members Rani Dasi, Deon Temne and Ashton Powell are running against 11 challengers in the Nov. 7 general election.
The challengers are Meredith Ballew, Vickie Feaster Fornville, Barbara Fedders, Jane Gabin, Solomon Gibson III, Mariela Hernandez, Honoria Middough, Renee Peet, Michelle Rissling, Taylor Tally and Allison Willis.
It may be one of the largest group of candidates to ever run in a Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board election. Five other candidates who filed in July, when the conservative Moms for Liberty group was said to be fielding potential candidates, withdrew before the November ballots were printed.
Board member Jillian La Serna is not running for re-election.
Early voting in the nonpartisan Nov. 7 election starts Oct. 19 and runs through Nov. 4..
To find polling places and full details on early voting, visit co.orange.nc.us/1720/Elections or contact the Board of Elections at 919-245-2350 or vote@orangecountync.gov.
Name: Barbara Fedders
Age: 56
Occupation: Associate professor and director, Youth Justice Clinic, UNC School of Law
Education: Bachelor of Arts, Juris Doctor
Political or civic experience: Chair, Town of Carrboro Community Safety Task Force; classroom volunteer; former board member, Reintegration Support Network
Campaign website: barbarafedders.org
Why are you running for school board and what makes you the right candidate? Current board members: Please also explain the delay in announcing your re-election campaign this year.
As a child advocate, litigator, educator and member of the LGBTQ+ community, I would bring a unique set of professional and personal experiences to the school board. For the last 15 years, I’ve served as an associate professor at UNC School of Law, directing the Youth Justice Clinic. My law students and I work with court-involved youth; I’ve seen how central a positive educational experience is to the healthy development of a child. I know how to ask hard questions, insist on accountability from those with power, fight for resources, navigate bureaucracies, and collaborate across difference to reach consensus. My two daughters, 16 and 11, have attended CHCCS schools since kindergarten.
What are the three top challenges facing the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools? Choose one and explain how you would address it.
▪ Legislators in the General Assembly refuse to adequately fund schools, appropriately pay staff, or respect the expertise of educators. This problem demands coordination with county and state officials to prioritize our supplemental school tax, find ways to create lower-cost housing so staff can afford our district, and push back against discriminatory laws coming out of Raleigh.
▪ Black and Latinx students, students with disabilities, low-income students, and multi-lingual learners face major opportunity gaps, leading to deep disparities in school experience and educational outcomes.
▪ Students and staff alike are stressed, and there aren’t enough resources to support wellness.
What do you think about the state’s 2021 Science of Reading law and Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling training, and how both initiatives are being implemented in the district? What would you do to improve student reading and literacy outcomes?
Cautiously, partially, optimistic. Science of Reading is based on the idea that students need direct, explicit instruction, grounded in phonemic and phonological awareness, to learn to read. The law requires uniformity in how districts go about implementing the law, requiring the use of the LETRS methodology. Our district provided a stipend for instructors to acquire the skills necessary to shift their teaching to incorporate this method, which I support. LETRS training is a step in the right direction, but the General Assembly’s ongoing failure to appropriately pay teachers and assistants and invest in students means we are unlikely to see the gains for our students we otherwise might.
What do you think about the district’s work to close the achievement gap? What would you do if elected?
It’s good that we have an ambitious equity goal in the strategic plan; this gives us something against which to measure our efforts. CHCCS has prioritized diversifying the teaching corps, funding programs (Blue Ribbon Mentor and AVID) designed to promote success for first-gen students and students of color, and standardizing and memorializing curricula across schools. All good. We need universal pre-K, which has a massive amount of research behind it. We must fix our bus problems, which especially hurt our most marginalized students. We need strong partnerships with local and county service providers. Kids spend more time in their community than in school; equity work must be broad.
How can the school district bring people with different viewpoints together to find common ground and workable solutions?
School board meetings across the country have become proxy political wars among adults that have nothing to do with students. We need to stay focused on the democratic promise of public education — it’s uniquely able to bring people together across difference. Diversity is an opportunity for everyone to learn from everyone else. The district needs to continue its efforts to reach families for whom English is a second language, who have parents working multiple jobs to make ends meet, and who have literacy challenges. Different modes of communication can help achieve that goal. Equity-focused PTAs and SITs can also do much of this work; this isn’t a top-down endeavor!
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