(Editor’s note: This Question and Answer is for the Clinton City Schools Board of Education race, with incumbent board members Jason Walters and Linda Brunson, and challengers Oscar Rodriguez and Jeremy Edgerton, all vying for three open seats. Board member Mike Lanier chose not to seek reelection. Questions, compiled by the Independent, were not provided in advance to any of the candidates. Answers appear as they were given. The following Q&A was conducted by Brendaly Vega Davis.)
Jason Walters: Walters has served on the board for two consecutive terms and wants to stay on for a third. Walters joined so that he could be a part of improving the school system. He began work there straight out of college, landing him in the Clinton area. Walters attended NC State University and obtained a B.S. in Engineering. He also works for ELC Real Estate. He is a industrialization and engineering manager of InTruss Modernization at Schindler Elevator Corporation in Clinton. He and his wife,Jeannie Walters, have a son, Reid Walters who graduated from high school.
Linda Brunson: Brunson is looking to retain her seat on the board. She was appointed in May of 2018 and appointed chair in July of 2018. Brunson worked for the district for 33 years before she retired. She graduated from Clinton High School and has served as a substitute teacher, teacher assistant, a teacher, assistant principal, principal, central office personnel, assistant and associate superintendent and instructional coach. Her experience also includes serving as a teaching associate profession for East Carolina University and as university supervisor for teacher interns at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington.
Jeremy Edgerton: He is a local business owner and a product of the Clinton City Schools system. He owns and works at NC Marble & Granite. He is married to Amanda and his daughters, Emily and Ella, go to Sampson Middle School and Butler Avenue Elementary.
Oscar Rodriguez: Rodriguez has lived in Clinton for 19 years. He served as the admissions director at Sampson Community College for 10 years and is now the executive director of enrollment development for the University of Mount Olive. He has served on many local boards, including CAFE, Clinton Area Foundation for Education.
SI: Why did you choose to seek a position on the county school board and what makes you a viable candidate for the board?
Walters: Well this is really going to be my third term to be on the board it takes a couple years to get up to speed and we’ve got a lot of new appointees a new positions are open so I just felt like that my presence is kind of needed for stability for one thing but there’s been times on the board already that with just a few new appointees where we had to say hey the reason why we’re were making this decision because of so and so and they just weren’t privy to that history. Especially with the new superintendent and a lot of new staff members, some of that history is necessary. The reason I feel like I would be a viable candidate just because I’ve got three things they have motivated me to run again. One was I’ve kind of grown into a role as a kind of liaison for the industry and the community a little bit and I can see in the workforce what kids got to be prepared for for both college and for work. The vocational areas as well areas as well because I work in a factory area with Schindler and we bring a lot of students in to have the welding skills and things like that that they come in with some experience and we could partner with some of the agencies to help bring kids in and they’re more job ready just like the CT program and I also have had the opportunity to do some internships through high school and bring kids in and give them to exposure to things that are in the job life at a college level too and I think we’ve helped make some decisions for the kids or help them make decisions by subjecting them to exposure. Secondly, I mentioned the history about the board earlier, I think that had played a role in wanting to be on the board as well. I kind of have my history and I guess finally it seems like out of everybody on the board that runs is really running for a reason and a lot of time it’s their history and their background that kind of drives what they’re interested in and I personally am a product with public school. I actually grew up in Robeson county and there weren’t a lot opportunities that I was exposed to because I worked on my dad‘s tobacco farm so we didn’t have a lot of job experience and so there’s one teacher that pushed me in the right direction and give me some guidance especially being a first generation college student so I’m kind of trying to give back as well. My life has been beneficial for going to college and I think I every child should have the opportunity to go if they want to and they should have the proper guidance. even though I’m even helping my son figuring out what he wants to do now I still feel like I don’t have the resource that I need to help make him help make good decisions choices and I know it’s worst for first generations. It’s important because of the opportunities.
Brunson: I’m choosing to retain my seat. I was appointed in May of 2018 when Mr. Mason passed away. The board appointed me to serve out his term and his term ends June 30, 2020 so I’ve been on the board since May of 2018 and I have actually been the chair since July of 2018. I actually love what I do. I have a passion for doing what I can to make things better for the children in our district and this is one opportunity that I have that I feel I can give back to my community in that way. I have been an educator all my life. I retired from Clinton City schools actually 11 years ago now. I have worked as a substitute teacher, I was a teacher’s assistant, I was a teacher, assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent, associate superintendent so I’ve worked in a lot of capacities. I’ve worked with a lot of boards in my career here in Clinton City schools so it’s just a way that I want to give back to my community. We have begun some great things since my first time on the board in May of 2018 and I want to finish up the good things that we’ve begun for the kids in our district.
Edgerton: The main reason that I wanted to run for the school board is because if you haven’t done second grade math or seventh grade multiplications…. I just have a feeling that we’re losing some of the core values of the math and the reading and the educational levels it just bothers me the way that we’re teaching children to do simple equations math that they can’t use in the real world as far as an employer being able to hire them. An accountant is not going to let you take 15 minutes to do a multiplication problem. The other thing I see is we need to bring vocational back to the schools. Not everybody needs to go to college. Not everybody wants to go to college. You know you can make a real good living being an electrician or a plumber or a carpenter or a brick mason. They used to teach those in schools and they don’t anymore. That’s one of the things that I would really want to see is to see vocational studies brought back to the schools to teach the children some things that can help them in the real world as far as getting a job. College is good having, an education is good, going to higher education is good, but sometimes it’s not for everybody and everybody doesn’t need to go to college to spend $250,000 to make it 35 or $45,000 living. You can go to a community college, you can go to a trade school, spend six or $8,000 and start making 65 or $70,000 a year and I just think with my business state of mind, because I own my own business with that business side of seeing things, and how hard it is for me to have employees. I had four people come and apply for a job today and the first question I asked them was, ‘Have you ever used a skill saw?’ And they said ‘no.’ I said if you have you ever mixed cement in a wheelbarrow. No. I don’t mind teaching somebody something but if they had had a concept of it in school it would make the hiring process process for a business and industry easier without having to spend so many hours training somebody how to mix cement in a wheelbarrow. So make sure they’re using safety with a skill saw so they don’t cut their fingers off or something. That’s just something that’s not being seen in school anymore.
Rodriguez: I sought an opportunity to be a part of the City School board because I believe that with my educational current active experience and seeing the needs of our students, I believe I can bring an opportunity for new initiatives and opportunity for change and an opportunity to continue to grow each one of our students to achieve their success. I believe in the equity and every student needs to be successful and I think we can work together to achieve that as a city school board member. Why am I a viable candidate? Again for my years of experience, for my involvement in the community. I’m a product of Clinton. Yes, I did not go to the city schools but I’ve lived in the city for 19 years. I started from the bottom up and I think I could be a mentor to a lot of students to show them that dreams come true and if you work hard you can be very successful in life. Again, bringing that mentality to the school board and working hand-in-hand with the school board members and with the administration we could get exposure and help each student achieve their full potential.
SI: If elected, what are your priorities for Clinton City Schools and what part of the academic experience in Sampson do you believe should be improved upon or highlighted?
Rodriguez: I think, if elected, my priorities will definitely be teacher recruitment, teacher retention and will also be evaluating the needs of the schools and the students. So, yes, it goes in pieces because we definitely have to have great recruitment great retention in our educators to continue to provide the excellent education that we do. Then, we need to look at what’s going on in our schools, how are we closing the achievement gap. That’s very important. How are we closing the achievement gap? How are we meeting the standards and how are we meeting the success of each child? So once we can evaluate that, what do we need to do as a board to support our Clinton City schools to achieve that? Is it going through the legislator to local and state? Is it working with business and industries? Is it creating partnerships with universities and community colleges? Is it working with retired teachers to have more mentoring opportunities for new teachers? It’s a variety of things but the most important piece is we all being focused on the success of each one of those students. I think within the academic side, again let’s look at what we need to improve. What is the data showing us? What are the areas of concern? Maybe we need to do after school programs. I think a great program that the schools had that we definitely need to look on bring back is programs such as the blazing stars. Where it’s allowing students to work with teachers and educational peers in order to do their homework and again help us close the achievement gap within the diversity of our community and the within the struggles of our community. Sometimes we know that the children might not have that extra support to do homework and the extra support to work on things school related. It’s the situation, so understanding those things and having programs such as the blazing stars that provide that torturing and that extra academic assistance. Again, let’s look at programs like the exceptional children. I believe we have a great program. What else can we do to continue that great program? The partnerships with the community college for career college approachments, allowing each student and providing that equity and provide that response to the situation that might be occurring in each school and work with each administrator to achieve success of the school — and the students and the teachers and the administration because it all works together. We have to ensure everybody’s success.
Walters: First of all with we’ve got a lot of stuff going on that I think are big improvements in the school system where we’re trying to work on getting back the after school program back into place that’s a big importance. I think that when it was in effect it was a benefit it was a grant funded program so that’s one priority and then secondly we’re at a point where we really need to look at our budget where building are concerned because the more and more as the buildings are aging we don’t have enough money to maintain just roofs alone so we’ve got to do more on the legislative side that we got to garner that kind of support and financial support and secondly it is a new law out that has to do with reduced class sizes and from first to third grade, actually I think it’s kindergarten to third grade and that’s great because it gives the kids more individualized attention but it’s really an unfunded mandate that there’s no monies that are scheduled to come from this. So in 2021 when you have a class size reductions from first to third grade that range with 17 to 15 kids per classroom with no more than an average of 18 but it’s kind of a scale step to that level in 2021. But you’re talking about adding a significant amount of teachers to support that and right now we just don’t have to see the funding to help do that so there’s we need to be working on some of the funding that case laws like Leandro case said that we need that North Carolina need to fund. You can’t make a mandate and not help figure out how we’re gonna pay for it too so I think I got a role there too. On the academic side an afterschool program would help out a lot because we are also getting more and more kids that are coming into the system at a younger age with more social and emotional needs so we need support in that area. As far as programs being highlighted obviously I’m a fan of the AIG program because it’s content replacement and I think that’s been a huge success for the kids that are going to college and our success rate for sending kids to college has been evident that some of these programs really work and I think that we need to improve the CTE program and I think the biggest thing is start partnering with our industries to help support programs that’s actually gonna see our their industry as well. The Agriculture department is really seeking a way to come up with a way to do more within the hog industry and not only on the mechanically level but on the scientific level evaluation to give them more experience and help maybe even develop scholarships or apprenticeships that are gonna grow into something.
Brunson: My priorities are, one, to be sure that we have a highly qualified caring teacher in every classroom and a highly skilled principal in every school building. I feel like if we can ensure those two things are in place then instructional outcomes for our students will improve. If there are mediocre teachers in classrooms or administrators who are not able to lead the buildings in this era, then we are short changing our kids and our responsibility is to do whatever it takes, do all that it takes to ensure that our kids have opportunities to achieve their maximum potential. The academic experience that I think we need to focus on are all subject areas of course but I believe if we focus on Reading, Math, Science and the Social Studies, those core foundational subjects, particularly reading. If all of our children are reading at or above their grade level, all those other courses will be easier for them to achieve whatever those goals are. If you can’t read, it’s hard for you to do the math because math problems are basically reading problems. If you can’t reading comprehend Social studies or Biology,those are heavy reading subjects, you have to have reading as that foundation. S,o we need to do more things and better things with literacy so that all of our children are reading where they’re supposed to read so that they can build a foundation to do well in the other subjects.
Edgerton: The main things you need to take care of are the cafeteria workers, the janitors, the teachers assistants and the teachers. They’re the ones that actually see the children every single day. The administration side, the education side, the state tells the school what we can do educationally. There’s tweaking that the school board can-do but they’re pretty well bound by what the state says you can learn, you can’t learn. There’s people that you hire as a board, mainly being the superintendent, if you have an excellent superintendent, and what research I’ve done on Dr. Johnson, he is the cream of the crop, so if you’ve got a good superintendent he’ll staff like he needs to staff and that part will take care of itself. As long as you’ve got a good leader all the learning and the technicalities and the dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s all that will take care of itself if you’ve got a good leader. But on a personnel side, you’ve got to make sure as a board member that you stick your head in the schools on a regular basis and stop in the cafeteria and say what do you see because like Dr. Johnson’s got to look over everything and I think a board member needs to go to the schools and walk around and talk to the cafeteria workers. Do you see anything that needs to be done? You’re in it every day. Talk to the janitors talk to the assistant to talk to the teachers. Y’all see the children every day. What do you want, what do you see needs to be done and move forward that way?
SI: What do you see at the system’s main challenges and what points of deficiency need attention?
Edgerton: The main challenge is I see even though they don’t call it common core anymore it’s still a common core platform that with a few tweaks. It’s still the learning process. The way we’re getting the information to the to the child’s head needs to change. That’s what I would change and that’s really it. The budgeting and all that stuff, I’ve read over some passed and some previous budgets, but without having the inside knowledge that a board member would have I’m not gonna say they’ve done something wrong because I wasn’t there during that discussion. But there are some budgeting issues that may need to be worked on that ,as a business owner and I have to make payroll and I have to make insurance and pay taxes and do all that stuff, I can bring some insight in the looking at other opportunities to make money. But like I said, Dr. Johnson he’s got a staff fill out the forms apply for the grants there’s things that it doesn’t matter who sits in the seat that are still going to be done and it’s a matter of looking at the big picture and taking care of the individuals that are at the school with the children every single day. If you make a cafeteria worker, a janitor, assistant teacher or a regular teacher, if you make them feel like you care they’ll go above and beyond for the children and that’s all I want to do. I want to make sure that from the top to the bottom we are all on the same page and that’s taking care of the kids.
Rodriguez: The biggest challenge with my years in education has always been the recruitment and the retention of teachers and growing the educational teaching pool. So getting students interested in the educational world and being teachers then, again, recruiting teachers providing competitive opportunities for their growth. And growth is many aspects. It could be educational growth, it could be professional growth, it could be financial growth. But providing those opportunities, working hand in hand with HR, again to have a great competitive package for our teachers, you know looking and working again with our stakeholders for opportunities for them, whether it’s opportunities for loan forgiveness, whether it’s opportunities to buy a house to have daycare. Just finding a lot of opportunities for them in that aspect but also the professional aspect. Are we providing more professional development for them and more mentoring opportunities? So I think it is not a deficiency it’s more of a challenge that we face everyday that we have to work hand in hand with the administration and provide feedback and provide guidance if it’s needed and go with them and create these partnerships so then we can have a teacher pipeline for example. Working with the University’s educational programs and say hey where are your graduates going. Can we interest them in Clinton City Schools? These are all the great things we do and these are all the great opportunities that we have afforded other teachers. And, we can grow that pipeline. It’s not necessarily a deficiency, it’s a challenge. But, I believe that I can work hand in hand with my board members and the administration of the school system to get us forward.
Brunson: I would say our main challenges are funding. As you know we don’t have a state budget yet and this is the end of February and we have gotten some information that we might not get a state budget next year. So, we’re operating on the current level of funding that we’ve had in the past and it’s really hard to plan new and different programs if you’re not sure of what funding you’re gonna get. So, I feel like the lack of funding or the unavailability or the uncertainty about future funding causes us to take a pause and try to determine what we can do differently and how we’re gonna fund that for the children. I think that’s one of our deficiencies. In addition to that, we’re in a small rural district in Southeastern North Carolina. I talked about the importance of a highly qualified caring teacher in every classroom and a highly skilled principal in every building. Once we get teachers here sometimes it’s hard for us to retain them because I go back to that funding as a deficit. We need to pay them for what they do. We need to provide a benefits packet for them so that they will stay here. We realize we don’t have a lot of social activities for our teachers to do after work and that is a reason why some leave because there’s nothing for them to do after 3:30 or four o’clock . We can’t compete with the Raleighs and the Wilmingtons and the Chapel Hills regarding social life. But, I still feel like we must pay our teachers for the hard work that they do and that will help us retain them and help us recruit more teachers to come to our district.
Walters: Well I just mentioned two so the funding for the reduced class-size is in the funding for the maintaining buildings is a big issue for us in coming forward going forward. Those are the biggest challenges that we face and teacher retention is a big challenge too. So it seems like there’s less and less teachers going into the profession because of the pay grades or the pay amounts so trying to get good teachers that want to stay and some of it has to do with younger teachers come into a small town that need to embraced by the town somehow so they learn to love being here so that’s a big part of it too. We’re doing everything we can on the educational funding to grow the opportunities for the students and to make our standards for education higher within the classroom. I think the superintendent has done a great job of really going through an creating an accountability model with walk-throughs to help improve the classrooms and give feedback to the teachers more immediately so we’re really working through, even the younger teachers, to help bring them up to speed and bring them up to a faster level and support them.
SI: In terms of curriculum, what changes or additions, if any, could be made to further enrich the learning experience for students?
Brunson: I think right now our curriculum is at a good place and there’s always and I mean always room for improvement. With the focus on Literacy, Math , Science, Social Studies, Technology, I think our curriculum is at a good place. We are always looking for more and different ways to serve the unique needs of children. We need to begin to look at how we can make what we do equitable for all children. That doesn’t mean equal. Equitable means if your needs are greater than my needs then we need to put our resources into your needs if they’re greater than my needs. We need to look at ways to make sure our curriculum is equitable and how we personalize learning for each child because every child learns at a different rate, different pace, different ways. We have to employ different strategies. It’s not a one size fits all anymore. We have to individualize that learning and we also have to provide opportunities for children to take a part in how they learn. One child may learn better by drawing a picture to explain the process. Another child may learn better by writing an essay. Still, another child may learn better by explaining it verbally. So we have to give children opportunities to master their learning in their own ways and show their mastery in different ways. So I think our curriculum is at a good place but we’re always looking for ways to improve. One of the things we’re working on is personalized learning and also looking at social emotional needs of children. All children don’t come to school happy, well fed, loved and nurtured, so we have to take all of those things into consideration as we build upon our curriculum.
Edgerton: The short answer is it’s hard to say from being on the outside. But as a parent of two kids that’s in the system, trying to figure out how to do homework is a challenge. And I talked to teachers about this and they agree. The math that we’re teaching children now is strange and different and sometimes I feel like educators get in a little bubble with their education field. There’s no outside coming in and giving them a perspective of this isn’t working. The math that my second grader is doing right now there’s no way they could’ve done that math and landed on the moon. It takes so long to get it done and if John Glenn said I’ve got a problem and they started figure out math equations the way we’re doing it today, he would’ve crashed in the moon with before they got the answers. We’ve got to get back to the fundamentals and teach the kids the fundamentals and then everything else will take care of itself.
Walters: I can tell you that we’ve adding Coding and I think it’s been a success. I’ve actually had a high school student that working as an intern for me now and he’s been going through some programing training along with some of the employees and he’s further advanced because of his experiences and he talked about that Coding program that he had been exposed to and that his sister’s going through right now so I think that’s been a success. We can continue to grow some of those higher level technical things at a lower level. Computer classes don’t need to be taught at eighth grade they need to be taught at a lower level. At one time we had introduced Spanish as a second language and taught it at a lower age. The European countries have multiple languages and it’s been a great success in a way but we couldn’t afford to keep offering the additional part of the curriculum because we didn’t have teachers to cover it. Programs had to get cut because of financial reasons that’s one of the first ones to go those are things that are not core. We can offer better opportunities at a lower level if we can have the resources to do it.
Rodriguez: Well I think in terms of curriculum I have a two way approach to that. I think again we need to continue to collaborate with the partnerships such as the community college where the career college promise where students are allowed to take college classes while in high school. I think that’s a great opportunity because we are allowing students to start exploring their career choices. I also believe that we need to continue to grow our honors and AIG programs where we can continue to provide students more course offerings and pathways that are designed for their success. Some pathways, again, is it a health pathway, is it a college schools pathway, is it a marketing pathway, is it a business pathway, which would do a great job. So continue to do that. One more thing that we need to continue to expose are younger generations to careers in the op-educational opportunities and future opportunities that are available for them. I think we need to start looking at middle schools, even students that are at Sunset Avenue. You know, as young as fifth, sixth even our kindergartners. Start bringing more career days more exposure to those folks that are leaders, that are changers that are contributors, that are our community. Expose them to those folks in our community that are making a change so our students can look up to what the future pathways has to them and all the great things that they can achieve with the great education that we provide at the Clinton City Schools. I would like to highlight all the children creating that equity. That’s one of my strongest things, I wanna work for all the children in this community. It’s about everybody because I want kids to look up and say well if he can do it anybody can do it.
