Volusia School Board District 3: Candidates discuss safety, retention, parent involvement

Political newcomer Jessie Thompson and former Edgewater City Councilman Justin Kennedy are running for Volusia County School Board District 3, which includes New Smyrna Beach, Edgewater and southeast Volusia County.

The winner of the Nov. 8 election will replace outgoing board member Linda Cuthbert.

Thompson and Kennedy finished first and second respectively in August's primary election, but were separated by only a fraction of a percentage point and a few dozen votes. Thompson received 33.77%, Kennedy received 33.57%, and third place finisher Kim Short received 32.66%

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While the race is non-partisan, politics have increasingly played a role in Florida schools. Kennedy is a Democrat but says his only political agenda is to vote his conscience and do what satisfies the most people. Thompson is a Republican and has attended GOP events.

Read more on this race: Kennedy and Thompson share views on recent Florida parental rights laws

Justin Kennedy

Justin Kennedy, 51, of Edgewater, is a father of five children, ages 15 to 25, and attended Radford University in Virginia for two years. He runs Justin Kennedy Landscapes and has also served on the Edgewater City Council, Redistricting Committee, Planning and Zoning Board and Scholarship Committee to benefit Edgewater High School students.

He has also been PTA president at New Smyrna Beach Middle School, served on the SAC and coached sports. His wife is a former teacher, and his mother was a teacher and area superintendent.

He has the endorsement of the Volusia United Educators teachers union and outgoing District 3 Board Member Linda Cuthbert.

Kennedy’s first priority is improving staff and teacher morale. He noted that recent Florida laws have made teachers feel uneasy, mistrusted and unappreciated.

“They've been layered on more and more duties and responsibilities in terms of paperwork, testing, professional development, all kinds of things that, as a teacher, little by little, has encroached in on a teacher’s autonomy to be able to be a good teacher,” he said, noting their need to be creative and teach in a style they’re comfortable with.

Since the board must comply with state mandates, Kennedy said it could alleviate pressure and stress on faculty by thinking through additional mandates the district has and reducing the workload on teachers to give them more time and resources.

A second priority is tackling budget issues and ensuring the district doesn’t dip into its reserves again, as it did for $41 million last year.

While he understands there were some surprises, he thinks it’s important to do a better job of sticking to the budget from start to finish and planning for unexpected expenses.

His third priority is to ensure that students are provided with the best educational opportunities in a safe and welcoming environment, which ties back to teachers having resources and support.

Kennedy said schools need to teach kids what’s most relevant in today’s world and stick to important lessons that relate to real life. Discipline issues must also be addressed so teachers can stay focused.

“The classroom has to be safe, has to be fun. The teacher has to be on solid footing. The teacher can't have their back up against the wall by people with an outside agenda or a district that's not being supportive,” Kennedy said. “All that rolls into creating an environment where kids can really learn.”

Kennedy said he will continue to support the district’s community outreach, mentorship and business partner programs. He also commended the district’s use of technology, such as Canvas, to help students and teachers stay organized and up to date on schoolwork.

In addressing recruitment and retention, Kennedy acknowledged it is a widespread issue, but the district is trying hard to reach out and share how rewarding teaching jobs can be.

To improve retention, it’s important the district personnel at all levels are on the same page and transparent about processes for hiring, firing, transferring and getting promoted, he said. He said Superintendent Carmen Balgobin is on the right path to re-earning trust between faculty and administration.

He also noted salary compression issues for veteran teachers who don’t make much more than first-year teachers.

Because funding is largely dependent on the state, Kennedy said meaningful gains in teacher pay at the county level would have to include give and take in the budget. He believes it should be a priority, though, in order to improve recruitment and to give teachers the pay they deserve to keep up with their expenses and have a higher quality of life.

In regards to parental involvement, Kennedy said that parents should be involved, but he acknowledged they have other commitments and demands on their time. Parent involvement should be a relationship of collaboration and trust with teachers, he said.

“My sentiment is that I trust teachers. Let's not forget that the majority of teachers are parents,” he said. “They're not just some kind of robots. They're not just some kind of scheduled soldier that's following the rules. They're human beings and they’re educated, they're trained.”

He noted they can also be objective and see things academically, socially and emotionally that parents don’t see because they interact with so many children.

Kennedy said the parents he knows want their kids to be safe, learn, get good grades and enjoy extracurricular activities rather than “be down at the school every other day fighting about some book that's in the library that hasn't been checked out in two years."

He has no problem with the library opt-out policy, though, and said parents have the right to use the policy within protocol. He said that teachers have always been accommodating when addressing objections and other requests in his past 20 years as a parent, though.

Kennedy also believes the district has a good safety and security policy, including fencing and single-point entry, but must ensure it is followed through to the end of the school year with Michelle Newman, the former safety and security director, having resigned.

While he believes the district has a good anti-bullying policy, he says it hasn’t been followed in his experience when his child was bullied in middle school.

“I think that as a board we need to stay focused and make that a priority on every board meeting, even if it's every other one,” Kennedy said. “Let's say it's once a month, just asking the question: Where are we at with bullying?”

Kennedy said he’s a realist and the board can’t solve every problem every time, but a successful term would include making things better for most people most of the time, looking out for teachers and squashing bullying.

Jessie Thompson

Thompson, 34, of New Smyrna Beach, is a mother of two. She has an associate degree and attended the University of South Florida for two years. She has managed a surf shop, written a book and performed family standup comedy.

She has also been a PTA president at Coronado Beach Elementary and served on the District Advisory Committee, School Advisory Council, Teacher of the Year Committee and Principal Hiring Committee.

Thompson has the following endorsements:

• Gov. Ron DeSantis.

• Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood.

• Rep. Byron Donalds.

• Rep. Paul Renner.

• 1776 Project PAC.

One of Thompson’s top priorities is increasing the district’s literacy rate, which she says can be done by adjusting the reading program and emphasizing phonics. Last year, 49% of students in grades three through 10 were proficient on their English language arts exams.

Her second priority is continuing to improve school safety.

“We've been extremely lucky that any incidents that do come up are handled very quickly, but there are little things that we can keep doing to improve, and so I plan to work with Chitwood, and we've already talked about quite a few other things to make our school safer,” she said.

A third priority is fostering communication and respect. Thompson hopes to bring an environment where parents feel like they can trust the school board again, as she says trust is very low for many parents right now.

One thing she says the district and Superintendent Balgobin are doing well is “leading with grace and respect,” as the district’s theme states.

On the topic of recruitment and retention, Thompson would love to see Florida as a leader in teacher pay and suggested working with the state to raise pay.

“As far as retention, I think it's important to listen to our teachers and to give them some respect,” she said. “I've talked to high school teachers, and that's their number one complaint. They're like, 'Administrators don't listen. Parents don't listen. Students don't listen. We just feel like we're not heard.'"

She also noted Atlantic High School’s teaching academy as a way to introduce students to the profession and says she has talked to Daytona State College about students spending more time in classrooms and staying in the community rather than leaving for other counties.

In addressing parental involvement in education, Thompson sees a direct correlation between involvement and better performing schools.

“I think that parents should be allowed to see the curriculum that their students are getting. I think they should be allowed to volunteer in classrooms. I think they should be allowed to see what's really going on in schools, what books are available,” she said.

She acknowledged teachers can feel like this oversteps boundaries.

“I think it's a fine tight rope that we walk to make sure parents have their rights met because at the end of the day, the children are the parents’, not the government’s,” Thompson said.

She said the state and nation are learning that parents have a right to keep their children from being exposed to certain materials, but she has also heard from parents who want their children to be less sheltered and respects that, too.

Thompson said the district’s policies on opt-outs and challenging books are “great” and suggested that books should have ratings like movies to easily tell the parent what their child checked out.

“You can never make every single person happy, but I do think letting parents kind of have a voice in what their kids can and cannot check out is definitely heading in the right direction,” she said.

Elaborating on school safety, Thompson said she does not tolerate bullying, especially because her daughter is a little person.

“We definitely need to do more than just talk about it, like there have to be consequences for bullying, and this includes cyber bullying which is a huge issue with social media right now.”

She said a lot of discipline issues on the school buses are overlooked, but the district employees and administrators can only do so much.

“At the end of the day, parents do have to parent and raise their kids to have respect for others,” she said.

Thompson said the district has pulled discipline too far back recently and described herself as “a huge fan of in-school suspension” as an effective measure. She said she would always vote to increase discipline.

For external safety threats, she recommended law enforcement do more live-action training at schools, without the students, to better prepare them. She also said she is not against having metal detectors at high schools and video cameras in schools, which could also help with bullying issues.

Thompson said she hopes to be a school board member whom teachers, administrators, students and parents feel like they can talk to and be heard, especially because students have a minimal relationship with the board.

Contact reporter Danielle Johnson at djohnson@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Election: Justin Kennedy, Jessie Thompson talk Volusia Schools issues