Daniel Fisher: My life experience shows the power of education

I believe my life experience, education and work history make me uniquely qualified to serve on the Alachua County School Board.

I was raised in poverty and in a broken home, so I experienced firsthand the life-changing power of education. I graduated from West Orange High School in Winter Garden in June of 1985, and entered the Air Force only two months later

In high school I was an average student and, like a lot of young people, I was not ready for college, so I joined the Air Force and became an aircraft maintenance technician. My first assignment was Kadena AB, Japan, and it was during my time there that I started maturing and began to see the world differently.

My second assignment was Beale AFB, CA, near Sacramento, and it is there that I met my wife Sherrill, started my family and began my college journey. I started with the small goal of earning an associate’s degree and later, going to school at night and on weekends. I earned my bachelor’s degree from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, graduating magna cum laude. A year later, I started an MBA program at Golden Gate University, graduating with honors in 2005.

I separated from the Air Force in December 1994, and spent the next six years starting my first business and working in the private sector. Shortly after finishing my MBA, I was hired as an adjunct professor of business for a small university in California, where I am still teaching.

I joined the Air Force Reserve in 2000, and worked in civil engineering as a first sergeant, and finally, in the field of intelligence, where I spent the last 11 years of my Air Force career. In 2011, I reentered active duty and spent three years as a superintendent, building an innovative organization supporting Air Force and National Security Agency missions at Fort Meade, MD, before retiring in 2018.

It is my 28 years in the Air Force, combined with my professional experience, that gives me a unique background in the trades, human resources, facility maintenance, intelligence and cyber security. I have managed and led in very large and diverse organizations, have experience with strategic planning, have worked with organizations of over 70,000 people to develop new methods and approaches to change, and have developed and managed large budgets. In fact, I consider my knowledge of finance to be one of my strengths.

My desire to run for this seat is driven by the number of students in Alachua schools who are struggling to read, and to do math and science on grade level. My focus, if elected, will be the education of our children, engagement of our parents, caregivers and community and the empowerment of our teachers and staff.

Here are a few of my ideas in specific areas:

1) With such low third-grade reading scores, we must prioritize and fund early childhood education. Specifically, this would entail expanding VPK to all elementary schools, and funding additional paraeducators for kindergarten, first and second grade.

2) We must have safe schools. School safety is a critical component of enabling our instructional staff to focus on teaching, students on learning, and parents on working and raising their families.

3) We need the district to make all decisions through the lens of “What is best for the students?”

4) We need our budget to reflect the above priorities. If we do these simple things, I am confident we will provide the excellent quality of schools our families and this community deserve.

Visit www.votefisher.com for more details.

Daniel Fisher is running for the Alachua County School Board, District 1. Opinion columns written by the candidates in this race and others running in the upcoming election can be found online at bit.ly/august22electioncolumns.

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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Column from Alachua County School Board Candidate Daniel Fisher