School board candidates say protests were a ‘teachable moment’

Both candidates running for the District 1 Manatee County School Board seat think the events at Manatee High School this week serve as a “teachable moments.”

Four candidates in the two remaining school board races faced off in debates sponsored by the Bradenton Herald and held at METV studios on Friday afternoon.

Incumbent Dave Miner and local planner Misty Servia beat out Charlie Conoley in the August primaries to head to November. In the District 1 race, teacher Gina Messenger and retired executive Ed Viltz knocked out Xtavia Bailey and Linda Schaich in the primaries.

When asked their thoughts on what’s happened at Manatee High this week, District 1 candidate Gina Messenger said she supports protecting the maximum amount of freedom for the maximum amount of people, but wanted to keep the disruptions at the school to a minimum.

“I always want to use everything as a teachable moment,” she said. “We need to talk to our students about the history of our country, the history on both sides. We also need to make sure that we can shorten the amount of disruption so that our kids can get back to learning. That is why they’re there, to learn.”

Ed Viltz, the other remaining District 1 candidate, agreed that Manatee High should serve as a teachable moment.

“ I think that the children that were involved should be made to understand specifically the level of insult the Confederate flag represents to many,” Viltz said. “That definitely should be a teachable moment where we focus our children on race sensitivities.”

In response to the same question, Servia said the district needs to do a better job at listening to those in the community before issues bubble over.

“One of the things our community is begging for is to be heard,” she said. “If we held town hall meetings, we could listen and be more aware of what is happening right here in Manatee County.”

Miner said the board meetings serve as a time when the public can come to the board to voice their concerns. He also said he makes an effort to get to schools and talk to those there.

“Talking about Manatee, I’ve been to every one of our schools, I talk with people about every topic,” he said.

In the District 3 race, Servia has run her entire campaign on a platform to rebuild trust in the district, alleging that incumbent Miner hasn’t been able to rebuild trust in the district.

“Trustworthy is not what we have, I’m sorry. We don’t have trust,” Servia said.

Disagreeing with the assessment, Miner said his record for the last four years proves he’s earned voters trust and that Servia just doesn’t want to acknowledge Miner has been part of the turnaround in the district.

“What we have done during the last four years I think is significant,” Miner said. “She doesn’t want to give me credit.”

Miner said that as a planner who works with developers, Servia would have to recuse herself from a number of important votes if elected to the school board.

“They won’t have that voice on the school board,” Miner said. “If they elect me they will not have that problem, that’s something to consider.”

Servia said she does not have a conflict of interest, and that Miner is trying to confuse voters.

“This loose lipped way of handling conflict may be one reason we have a school district mired in a culture of litigation,” Servia said after the forum. “In the 10 years that I have worked for King Engineering I only recall one charter school that we worked on. We have not worked on any standard public schools.”

In the District 1 forum, Messenger took aim at some of the information in Viltz’ stump speech, asking him to show proof that he has managed $100 million budgets like he says he has and asking him to prove he helped write a turnaround plan for Team Success, a Title 1 charter school in Manatee.

Saying she was unable to validate that information herself, Messenger implied that Viltz wasn’t being honest, open and transparent with voters.

“I’m just a little unsure,” Messenger said. “I’ve done lots of research.”

Viltz responded saying that if he listed everything he did on his resume, it would be 10 pages long.

“The allegations are absolutely not founded in fact, and I’d be happy to substantiate those offline,” he responded.

This story was originally published September 30, 2016 at 5:26 PM with the headline "School board candidates say protests were a ‘teachable moment’."