The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

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  • The Georgia School Boards Association, meeting in Savannah, hosted a forum for candidates for state school superintendent Saturday morning. Five attended: from left, John Barge, Beth Farokhi, Joe Martin, Richard Woods and Brian Westlake. (Photo by Carl Elmore/Savannah Morning News)

    061210StateSupt tease.jpg

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June 13, 2010

Schools superintendent hopefuls debate

ive candidates hit Savannah riverfront to discuss funding, feedback

By Arek Sarkissian II arek.sarkissian@savannahnow.com Dalton Daily Citizen

DALTON — SAVANNAH — Candidates for state Superintendent of Schools weighed in Saturday morning during the Georgia School Boards Association Summer Conference and Delegate Assembly in a panel discussion peppered with questions about policy and funding.

The five hopefuls gathered at the Hyatt Regency Savannah to make their cases before the July 20 primary. Here’s what they had to say, in order of response:



Q: Funding of public education has been reduced substantially over the past several years. How do you propose to ensure that public education in Georgia is adequately funded?



Beth Farokhi, Democrat:

“We need to set the priority of education as the top component. Right now, we are suffering from a tremendous budgetary crisis because of lack of leadership and priority in education. Right now, we are cutting major components that are going to impact education. They’ve cut out the governor’s honors program. They’ve cut out the preschool handicap program, services for students with autism, technical education. State schools for the deaf and visually impaired have been cut. We cannot move in that direction.”



Joe Martin, D:

“First of all, we need a state schools superintendent who ... knows how the state goes about setting this budget. If the formula were properly set — if the components in that formula measured, realistically, the costs they represent, that formula should be about $10 billion. Right now, it’s about $9 billion. The state has arbitrarily cut that by another $1 billion. So we’re down 20 percent from where the formula should be. Those are big numbers. But what does matter is that’s about $30,000 per classroom. That is a huge deficit we’re having to cover, and it affects our children. We need a state superintendant who can explain these needs to the governor, to the general assembly and to the general public.”



Richard Woods, Republican:

“I definitely think we need to look at our prioritization. We had the lion’s share of the budget, but we found out we were so restrictive on how we can spend money and address money. We need a line item budget so we can make sure we can move things around. Again, when I have a teacher that comes up to me and says, ‘I have $10,000 to spend from my director, she says just spend it whether I need it or not,’ we have a serious allocation problem. So we need to make sure we are flexible at the state and local levels so we can move funds around adequately and also use our purchasing problem to have purchasing consortiums, so that we can buy and purchase in a business manner as well.”



Brian Westlake, D:

“I think the key is changing the culture. I think in order for us to move forward we’ve seen these cuts for a reason. Public education is a core function of government. If we don’t do that, we can’t do anything. We haven’t done that to date because we haven’t had the broad support we need. And we need to turn that around, and doing that is by empowering people in the classroom.”



John Barge, R:

“Fifty-eight percent of the state’s budget goes toward education. In the difficult times we’re in, it’s unrealistic to think we wouldn’t have to take cuts. So in the end we need a state superintendent who can work with the state legislature and going line by line in the budget to see where we can cut, what can we live with, what as a state we can live without so we can get more funding on the education side. ... We need a superintendant that can work with our teachers, knows how to do more with less. And in the end it comes down to instruction and curriculum with the money that you have.”



Q: When elected the state school superintendent, from whom will you solicit advice and counsel when developing educational policy?



Woods:

Said he planned to listen to school board members across the state and “listen to our teachers in these classrooms, because day in and day out they’re the ones who have to implement the policies. Those are the ones that I hear. We know so much about education, but unfortunately we ignore what we do because primarily these are political decisions. We do need to work together. We need to follow through with the vision project that is there and extended it to get some soliciting from parents as well.”



Westlake:

“I think we need to work with all stakeholders in terms of developing policy. I think in recent history, from somebody who’s in the classroom, I think the big omission is to not involve people who are in the classroom in the development of policy and also the carrying out of policy. And that’s where things really have broken down. In a lot of international comparisons, Finland often comes near the top of international comparisons. ... The Finnish are in half the number of hours in the classroom, which leaves them a lot more time to get involved in policy making, collaborate with colleagues. ... I think we need to move in the direction of treating people in the classrooms like professionals.”



Barge:

“No one knows better than the classroom teacher what his or her child needs. No one knows better than the school principal what his or her staff needs. No one knows better than local boards of education to allocate resources in their school district. That being said, listening to these folks and seeking their counsel and advice, I will turn and look to our legal experts, or legislators and our state board in making policy decisions.”



Farokhi:

“We need to make sure that what ever the policy that’s being looked at, developed, we bring a variety of people to the table — the representatives from various groups that are directly impacted. One of the areas that I’ve watched that has not been strongly connected to the department of higher education is our higher education institutions that provide the training and support for our teachers and our principals. They are constantly doing research, and yet there is a very weak connection between our department of education and higher education.”



Martin:

“If you want to know how candidates will act in the future, the best way is to see how they acted in the past. I’m known as a team player. And decisions we have to make together, I would work with all the major organizations. I know the leaders of those organizations on a first-name basis, and we enjoy mutual respect. My approach would be to reach out, deal with the people who represent various groups. But most of all I would make a special effort to involve educators. They feel left out of the decision-making process.”



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ON THE WEB

John Barge: www.electjohnbarge.com

Beth Farokhi: www.bethforeducation.com

Joe Martin: www.joemartin.org  

Brian Westlake: www.brianwestlake.com

Richard Woods: www.woodsforgeorgiaed.com

 

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