ISSUES

Vocational Programs

Although it would be fantastic if all students would graduate high school and go to college, we know that is
not realistic. My opponent disagrees with me on this. However, I beleive we must provide other educational
opportunities to those students who don't pursue higher education. There are many lucrative careers for
non-college bound students. Vocational Education is an area that MUST be expanded upon. I spoke with a
lot of business owners who complain that there are not enough trained employees for them to hire. I believe
these programs can be created thru partnerships with local business's that already spend an incredible
amount of money on training new employees. These partnerships should be able to provide internships to
students while they learn. Properly designed programs should allow for students to feed into collegiate level
vocational programs such as those at BCC. This can become another path to higher education.

Zero Tolerance

I get asked about this quite often. Zero Tolerance is a good idea if it was well defined for every situation.
While in truth, it is not. I have heard of many situations where students became a victim of zero tolerance
and the punishment was not at all fair. Furthermore, I don't believe we should ever let a victim of an
incident be a further victim thru enforcing zero tolerance. A student who is bullied into a fight should not be
additionally victimized by being suspended for protecting themselves. Of course our ability to determine this
lies in witnesses descriptions of the event. I believe our administrators truly care about doing what is best
for our kids. So we need to find some common ground between zero tolerance and being fair.

Safety and Security

There is much debate about School Resource Officers (SRO). I have heard principals of elementary schools
say they don't need them because they don't have many discipline problems. Parents also have questioned
why we need them even in high school. There seems to be a belief that SROs are purely a police action.
What everyone is not realizing is the true role of a SRO. These dedicated people are some of the best
mentors we have in our schools. They work to be friends with the students and to ensure students are
comfortable speaking to officers. This teaches kids of all ages to have respect for the law. And as we know,
too many kids need more respect for everyone and everything. SRO's also work to mediate issues that arise.
A successful mediation should result in educating a child in what they did wrong. And hopefully if it wasn't a
serious incident, send the child back to class, or to their parents. Certainly not to jail.

Charter schools vs. Vouchers

I very much support charter schools. Charter schools have proved to be more efficient than our public
schools. This is partially because they are private facilities run by private organizations. My opponent has
made it very clear that he doesn't support public money in private institutions. Yet he supports charter
schools? By state law, charter schools must be accountable for their performance and for their usage of
public funds. I believe this is necessary. Because of this I cannot support vouchers without question. The
flaw in vouchers is that they represent public money that does not have to be accounted for. In some parts
of the USA this may be necessary to accept due to problems with their public schools, it is not necessary to
accept in Brevard.

I do however believe that every child is entitled to their fair share of tax money appropriated to education.
Students going to private school, or who are home schooled, do not get their tax money towards education
to the full extent that a public school student does. This deprives Brevard of its own tax dollars! We need to
find solutions to obtaining more of our educational tax money. To make this happen I will be lobbying up to
our state legislators to get them to make some necessary changes.

Increase Funding To the Classrooms

My experience as a current member of the school board audit committee has taught me that we can ensure
efficient spending practices by looking into negotiating fuel purchases and utility expenses and by reducing
high risk handling of financial areas. We also need to increase business partnerships which include favorable
local spending policies.