School board candidates

Printed From: MiddletownUSA.com
Category: Middletown City Schools
Forum Name: School Board
Forum Description: Discuss the board individually and as a group.
URL: http://www.middletownusa.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6203
Printed Date: Nov 21 2024 at 7:23am

Topic: School board candidates

Posted By: Vivian Moon
Subject: School board candidates
Date Posted: Oct 29 2015 at 10:25am

Posted: 10:31 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015

Council, school board candidates share views

By http://www.journal-news.com/staff/ed-richter/" rel="nofollow - Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN —

There weren’t a lot of differences among the candidates running for Middletown City Council and Middletown Board of Education during a Candidate’s Forum Wednesday. In fact, most agreed with their fellow candidates’ comments.

The Chamber of Commerce Serving Middletown, Monroe and Trenton sponsored the forum that was held at the Middletown City Building. The forum was split into two 45-minute sessions — City Council and school board candidates were queried on several questions and given a short amount of time to respond. City Council candidate Roy Gordon was unable to attend the forum, but an opening statement on his behalf was read by moderator Lenny Robinson.

Nearly 60 people attended the forum.

Part 2 of this article
There are two races for Middletown school board: incumbent Katie McNeil and newcomer Todd Moore are vying to complete two years of an unexpired term; and incumbent Deanna Shores along with first-time candidates Chris Urso, Anita Scheibert and Michelle Novak are seeking one of three open seats for a full four-year term.

While all agree there is a need for standardized testing and reducing the time used to prepare and take the tests, they all don’t think it should be a one-size-fits-all approach. They would prefer that time be used teaching on classroom learning and less on the testing.

Novak said, “I do have four children in the district and every year its. I’m not sure how its benefiting my children and I don’t think there is a career field when they graduate to be good testers…. I think they they need to spend more time in the classroom teaching them about math, science, reading, English, … the core things they need to learn……. I don’t support all of the testing we are doing.”

Scheibert said there is are plenty of reliable testing systems and said the purpose was to collect data by consistent measure individual student achievement over time and said there was wasted tax dollars on materials used for one year after the state scrapped the PARCC testing.

“Why the state decided that they should standardize this, I’m not sure,” she said. “I kinda believe this testing situation has been hijacked by political forces. I don’t think it’s to the student’s advantage. I witnessed children taking the PARCC test last year and it was torturous thing.”

Shores said she thanked God for not having to take as many standardized tests as students take today adding that she was a horrible good test taker and glad someone taught her that learning is lifelong.

“I sit before you with several degrees from top universities,” she said. “Standardized testing to me is horrid that the way we focus on it as it’s done today..”

Urso said he’s not anti-testing and was glad to have taken a test before getting a driver’s license before driving.

“There is a time and place to test. I think when its the only currency to determine if someone is capable, I think that’s when you’ve put too much stock into it.”

If the test is sole means, it takes away the enjoyment of learning and creativity of the students.

McNeil said, “Testing is a measure of a student’s understanding, and performance and it’s important.”

She said when the new middle school comes online she’d like to explore year-round schooling. McNeil said testing is good for diagnostics and there is a need to know when a child needs intervention.

She said testing is an accountability piece and a measure of expectations for understanding and relevance of student performance.

Moore said he shares the frustrations of standardized testing and has heard from people via social media.

“I think one of the frustrations for me is that its changed the culture of learning,” he said. “When the overwhelming number of tests we’ve had to endure in the district, I think kids are exhausted.”

He said testing has been overdone at this point but is glad things are changing at the state level.

Replies:

Posted By: VietVet
Date Posted: Oct 29 2015 at 1:17pm

There would be no need for proficiency testing if there was a confidence level that the kids were being prepared for college or employment after high school. That is not the case and is aptly demonstrated by the low proficiency scores we have seen for over a decade from the grade levels tested in the different categories. The testing is a direct result of a lack of confidence that the educators are adequately producing a quality product upon graduation.

Throw in the fact that the colleges IE, MUM, have stated in the past that the high school graduates, even though recipients of high school college preparatory courses, are still not prepared to hit the ground running to show proficiency in the college freshman classes. Colleges have set up remedial classes to better prepare the high school graduate to make the transition. It looks as if the high schools would make an effort to understand at the college level, what is needed from them to allow better preparation so that the colleges wouldn't have to do it for them. Guess not.

Why is it that in days gone by, schools were able to better prepare students for college without the need for proficiency testing from the government and remedial classes from the colleges to assure they were prepared? What has changed that has caused the introduction of testing at the high school level so that we all can be sure the kids are ready for the next step? Is it poorer teaching skills? Is it the poor attitudes in the kids coupled with the parents indifference that has changed? Is it that the curriculum needs to be adjusted to accommodate a new situation? Teaching methods need to be changed? More discipline and a more controlled classroom needs to be implemented again? All of the above?

With the uncertainty whether the kids are learning and prepared or not, what other way, other than testing, are we going to use to keep track of the progress? What happens if we don't test along the way and we find out when the kid is a senior, that he can't spell, construct a sentence, do math or understand basic knowledge needed to live in the world beyond the classroom? What would the no test advocates suggest we do then and how would they monitor progress along the way?

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I'm so proud of my hometown and what it has become. Recall 'em all. Let's start over.

Posted By: ktf1179
Date Posted: Nov 02 2015 at 8:24pm

Found a You Tube video of the School Board Candidates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijx99kiccqI" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijx99kiccqI

Posted By: Stanky
Date Posted: Nov 03 2015 at 7:28am

Vet, educators want to have their cake and eat it too. This includes union protection and antiquated salary determination ($ bonus for a Master's degree, which most of these 'low-GPA in college' teachers obtain without too much difficulty). It also includes an allergic reaction to being measured and monitored along with excuses about the problems of the low-income families they have to deal with. They want all the upside of a profession and none of the downside.

I wish I had a job where just showing up was all that mattered.

Posted By: VietVet
Date Posted: Nov 03 2015 at 11:45am

"I wish I had a job where just showing up was all that mattered"

I see it everyday here at Wright-Patt. The jobs where showing up is all that matters are not only in education but permeate the government ranks too. There are many GS grade government people here on base who have fancy titles, show up, draw a six figure salary, have some coffee, go to meetings to decide not to decide until the next meeting and, in general, make life miserable at times for the contractors who are actually doing the work for them.

Case in point......

Got a "building superintendent" for our building. EVERY building on base, in areas A, B and C have a "building superintendent". He is a GS-12 starting at $65 thou and topping out around $79 thou a year.(His GS rating is on his E-Mails so I looked up the pay scale just for interest) I have watched this guy off and on for over 10 years now noting what he seems to do each day. He comes in, goes upstairs to his office. Opens his E-Mail, checks and responds to them, escorts the fire dept. around during fire inspections, checks on the work order status on jobs to fix various things in his building, walks the halls/conducts many conversations, goes outside occasionally (I guess to see if the dam building is still there), heads off base for lunch and calls it a day in the early afternoon. Comes in around 8, give or take a half hour and usually leaves with us around 4 or so.

This is an example where many people are doing little to nothing for a high salary and they ride the gravy boat to retirement owning a nice house in Beavercreek, a bass boat, a few motorcycles, a newer model pick-up truck and the wife's Caddy. You can get an idea of how much these government people make just by looking at all the Beamers, Audi's, new pick-up trucks and Lexus and Acuras in abundance around these government buildings.

Government people need to stay where they are because if effort really mattered, they couldn't make it in private industry and the high rollers in private industry don't necessarily break a sweat on a daily basis either. It is incredible to see how much the taxpayer takes it on the chin paying for these pathetic people to do what little they do. A very poor return on investment for the taxpayer.

As to educators......step increases, rewards for achieving a certain level of education and tenure rewards must go. Merit based, like the majority of the working world should have been the method to reward performance all along. Giving in at the negotiation table all these years has done nothing but shafted the taxpayer paying their salaries. All the excuses used to substantiate poor performance should not have been tolerated by the public either. It has gone on so long that it is now SOP with the apathy from the public negating the backlash that should have happened decades ago.

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I'm so proud of my hometown and what it has become. Recall 'em all. Let's start over.

Posted By: VietVet
Date Posted: Nov 04 2015 at 6:09am

Congratulations to the new school board members. This looks like the start of the purging of the old guard that has kept Middletown schools at the bottom for so long, content to conduct business as usual in an on-going failing mode of operation. I presume you have some ideas on how to change things in drastic fashion and will exercise these ideas as quickly as possible to turn this disaster in a new direction. We supporters will be waiting and watching the direction you wish to take the district. Now, we need to purge the other long time members for a clean sweep, then sit back to judge whether it has gotten any better. My hope is that you won't turn out to be like the ones who were eliminated. If that's the case, we will need to do some more purging until we get the correct combination. Good luck. You have an overwhelming task before you.

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I'm so proud of my hometown and what it has become. Recall 'em all. Let's start over.

Posted By: wannaknow
Date Posted: Oct 26 2017 at 10:09am

I attended the meeting 10/24/2017 at the city building to meet the candidates for the upcoming election. The school board portion held opening statements from Mr. Hughly. Initially I was impressed with his platform which stated we need more parental involvement. It seemed he answered every question with this same platform and didn't have a Plan B. So what is the alternative if parents continue to shirk their responsibilities? He had none to offer.

Kathy Mulligan stated there were a number of things we could do to improve but really had nothing concrete to offer, imo.

I was quite impressed with Todd Moore. He was well informed and relayed plans already in action that had more advantages for the future. He also stated changes needed to be made and added it is difficult to make needed changes. He didn't elaborate at length but I think most know and agree changes need to be made.

I have a 10 year old in Middletown City schools. I feel like the schools are concentrating on teaching the children how to pass state testing. Our schools do have the lowest rating of any neighboring school. Am I wrong to think if more effort was put in to teaching all subjects more in depth then the state testing scores would show a higher proficiency rating due to the fact the children knew the answers and not because they had memorized the test answers.

Posted By: VietVet
Date Posted: Oct 26 2017 at 8:37pm

Looks like it will be school board candidate Todd Moore and perhaps Vitori and one other newcomer on council for my votes. Sure won't be Bronston. My only hope is that we will get some new thinking and new direction and any "Laubach" type thinking will not be forced out as Josh was. Don't want more Anita Scott-Jones types either. She started out asking questions and then fell silent toward the end, apparently having been converted. Might have been a reason for her not winning re-election, don't know for sure.

Doesn't surprise me that you heard generalized, non-committal, glossed over rhetoric from most of these people. They are in the same mold as all the other cookie cutter candidates, especially Kathy Mulligan. It runs in the family as to uttering the inner circle doctrine. We may never be free from the Mulligan dynasty now that she may be added to the school board roster with council having Larry and Joe (if Joe wins God forbid).

I would like to see a major incumbent purging on school board and council. The current crop on both are sadly ineffective and are not what this city needs. We never hear from any school board member during their entire stay and, usually what we hear from council is saturated with the wrong focus and poor decision making.

Incumbent purge/change in direction......both council and school board.

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I'm so proud of my hometown and what it has become. Recall 'em all. Let's start over.

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