CHCCS School Board and Hillsborough Board of Commissioners Voter Guides -

KF: There’s several. One is delivery of services. From a budgeting standpoint, it’s not an exciting topic, but keeping an eye on ensuring our town operations have the sufficient resources to deliver the services our residents expect. We do have a lot of growth that’s happening now, and much of it was approved prior to the great recession. With the great recession and the commercial property recession, which delayed a lot of that, we’re seeing it explode all at once which requires delivery of services. We have to make sure that we maintain financial soundness and high quality delivery. Integrating our new communities into the town and preserving our small town character and cohesiveness is important. Growth is occurring outside of the town limits, it will be occurring within the town limits, and making sure that we have very good communication with our established residents as well as with our new residents, that we work to include everyone in our town, that we make them feel welcomed, and that they all remain comfortable calling Hillsborough home.

Incumbent Jennifer Weaver

Jennifer Weaver is an incumbent running for Hillsborough Board of Commissioners. Photo courtesy of Weaver.

Relevant Past Experience: Weaver has served one term on the Hillsborough Board of Commissioners.

DTH: What’s your biggest vision for development in Hillsborough?

Jennifer Weaver: I would say the way that I think about it is that I’m very committed to several different ways of thinking about land use, we have a strategic growth plan, a land use plan, and a water sewer/foundry plan. All of those are really important to how we grow. We can’t prevent growth as long as Hillsborough is a place people want to live – people are going to move here. But we need to be thoughtful about where we place those people. We’re trying to create walkable communities, different kinds of housing, that kind of thing.

DTH: What would you say the biggest issue is that faces Hillsborough?

JW: I would say that the community is very anxious about the growth we are experiencing...And people are also worried about housing affordability in general and our growth and affordability are related. If we having a housing scarcity, then housing will get even farther out of reach for people.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools School Board Candidates

Incumbent James Barrett

James Barrett is an incumbent running for his third term on CHCCS school board. Photo courtesy of Barrett.

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Relevant Past Experience: Barrett has served two terms on the CHCCS school board. He currently works at Lenovo as an IT program manager.

DTH: Why are you running for CHCCS school board?

James Barrett: I’m running because I think we have an opportunity to be a great district, and I think I’m as qualified to make that happen. I’ve had a long involvement in the community — I actually grew up here and went to Chapel Hill High and Phillips Middle School before that and then I was involved with a lot of social justice work around the community with a group called Justice United for a while, and then I’ve been on the board for six years. So I understand how to make changes and how to make sure we get the most out of our administration.

DTH: What should the board to do close the achievement gap?

JB: In addition to the plan implemented in the spring, I think we can do more for improving instruction, like personalized learning and maybe even using technology to make sure everybody does what they need to… We need to do a better job with our transparency, particularly around budgeting. People don’t have a clear idea how we spend the significant amount of money that we do have and I want to continue to work toward that. We’ve done some things, but we could do much better in the future.

Incumbent Joal Broun

Joal Broun is an incumbent running for her second term on CHCCS school board. Photo courtesy of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools.

Relevant Past Experience: Broun joined the board in March of 2016 after Michelle Brownstein resigned.

DTH: Why are you running for CHCCS School Board?

Joel Broun: I’m running to continue the work of closing the opportunity gap, for recruitment, retention of quality teachers, to develop a plan for a consistent amount of capital funding in order to renovate and repair our schools and third to allocate our resources so we can provide support to our students, which includes mental health services, which we need a greater amount of. And to ensure the district provides for all of its students. So that means at times providing different resources for different students so that they can all excel to their best potential.

DTH: What should be done to close the achievement gap?

JB: Well some of the things we are already doing, which is why I want to remain on the board, is we are implementing a restorative justice model. We are monitoring and working on our discipline because if you’re not in the classroom, you can’t learn. We are looking at our instruction to make sure that it is culturally relevant for all of our students and I think it’s really important when looking at how we operate the school system from an equity model. It’s important to have people that have done some things to do that (close the achievement gap) and who also want to continue to do those things. And also to understand that it has to be a consistent and long term way of operating the school.

Calvin Deutschbein

Relevant Past Experience: Deutschbein served as Westwood precinct secretary for the Orange County Democratic Party.

DTH: Why are you running for the Board of Education?

Calvin Deutschbein: The person I knew on the school board (growing up) I always thought of as ‘Greg’s Mom,’ not as ‘School Board Member Steiner.’ Part of why I want to run is I want to change that for other students so we have more student-focused representative. Here right now, everyone on the board is a parent, and I think that it’s important to have parents there, but I think it’s also important to have students and teachers, other educators on the board as well to represent them. I think my additional perspective as a recent student, especially a student that took AP classes and attended a school district very much like this one, could be very useful in terms of moving conversations forward.

DTH: What should the school district do to close the achievement gap?

CD: Right now, we’re seeing somewhat of a racial stratification across gifted, honors, and AP classes, which draw white and, to a certain degree, Asian-American students out of the general student population and we end up with this sort of de-facto intra-school segregation routine, especially in middle and high school. I think education is better for all students if they’re in classrooms that look like their communities and so I think this is an area where we can talk about how inequity is hurting everyone. I also think it’s important that many of the problems with inequity in our school district arise from cultural problems and are not things that can be directly addressed by policy. I think by looking at representative classrooms, by being able to general large numbers of examples of students from all backgrounds that are succeeding in all different walks of life, in all different types of school programs, we can kind of puncture a lot of narratives around the ongoing legacy and tradition of what affirms this ideology in this country that is contributing to a lot of the poor treatment of students with different backgrounds inside of our school district.

Amy Fowler

Relevant Past Experience: Fowler served as Chair of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Special Needs Advisory Council

DTH: Why are you running for the Board of Education?

Amy Fowler: As a parent, pediatrician, and school volunteer and advocate, I care about all kids. Our schools serve many kids well, but we need to improve particularly for students of color, English language learners and students with disabilities. We also need to work on teacher recruitment and retention. And we must maintain programs that are working well, such as dual language and high school academies.

DTH: What should the school district do to close the achievement gap?

AF: In addition to pre-K, we should also continue supports in early elementary, middle school, and high school including preteaching, literacy coaching, tutoring, and engaging summer activities. The district has also already started to provide professional development around implicit bias and restorative justice practices which should also help.

Kim Talikoff

Relevant Past Experience: Talikoff is a former Estes Hills Elementary School fourth-grade teacher

DTH: Why are you running for the Board of Education?

Kim Talikoff: Within CHCCS, as a parent of two children who have always attended our schools, as a teacher, and as a member of the superintendent’s advisory committee, I have seen many opportunities to improve how we serve our students. In order to achieve that potential, we must understand how the rubber really meets the road inside our schools. I am running for the School Board to bring that perspective. Going forward, I believe we need to focus on these priorities: (growth across the board, teacher retention and recruitment and smart investments in technology and infrastructure).

DTH: What should the school district do to close the achievement gap?

KT: We want every student to self-identify as a learner who tries hard things. Important gains on this front can be made by examining our practices carefully in order to identify where, inadvertently, we have limited access to curricular enrichment at the classroom, the school, and the district levels. Our teachers are keenly aware of the existing disparities within our district and they work hard to mitigate all shortfalls and lack of progress in outcomes. Their work can be made more effective for students by enhancing intra-district communication and by improving instructional supports.

Mary Ann Wolf

Relevant Past Experience: Wolf served as the director of Digital Learning Programs at the Friday Institute at N.C. State University.

DTH: Why are you running for the Board of Education?

Mary Ann Wolf: I am a parent in a school district and my kids have been in the elementary middle and high school here. And I also have extensive experience in education and public policy and business and I want to bring that experience to the school district. I think that as a school district we have a very solid base and we are a good school district for many of our students. But I think we have the opportunity to be an excellent school district for all of our students. And I think it's very important that we continue to move in the direction of really understanding each learner and also being able to help each player reach their potential. And so I want to apply my experience to that. And so in education I've actually been a classroom teacher and I've spent the majority of my professional life helping schools and districts across the state and across the country actually improve in their teaching and learning.

What should the school district do to close the achievement gap?

MW: There's not one answer. I think it is really looking comprehensively at the whole child. Also, how do we utilize in-school, before-school, after-school is the way to really support that. And so, you know, those are just a few of the ideas. But I do think that it's something that our district can tackle. I think we have community members we will get. There are many groups really helping us to understand some of the biases people have, some of the things that are around discipline that might not be even people realizing that some of these were making the gap even worse. So how do we help people to have the knowledge they need so that they really can help address the whole student and the learning? And I think going back to really meaningful instruction that challenges students to apply what they're learning and is relevant will help all of our students but will also help mitigate the achievement gap.

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