At Bradenton Herald forum, differences emerge among school board candidates

Hitting on impact fees, school choice, charters and many other issues, candidates hoping to gain a seat on the Manatee County School Board faced off Wednesday in advance of the Aug. 30 primary.

Two seats on the school board are potentially up for grabs.

Three candidates, Charlie Conoley, incumbent Dave Miner and Misty Servia, are running for the District 3 seat.

Four candidates, Xtavia Bailey, Gina Messenger, Linda Schaich and Ed Viltz, are vying for the District 1 seat.

Voters throughout the county can vote for each school board seat.

District 3

A stark contrast on budgeting practices set candidates for the District 3 seat apart.

Conoley, a banker, said that if the community extends the half-cent sales tax for schools in November, the district should not charge impact fees on new development.

“I think we could achieve all of the budget items with the sales tax item. Impact fees are a political football. We have a serious affordable housing crisis in this county,” Conoley said. “The last thing we need to do is raise the cost on our homes and the rent on our apartments. I think you are getting greedy if you try to do all of that.”

Both Miner, the current District 3 school board member, and Servia, a local planner, disagreed with Conoley’s assessment.

“We need both impact fees and the extension of the half-cent sales tax. Even with both of those, we are still shortchanged in a lot of areas,” Servia said.

Miner said the school board heard loud and clear from those in the community that, in order for the sales tax to pass, impact fees needed to be collected at the full rate, to make sure people were paying their fair share for new development.

“I think that financing the capital improvements for our schools both old and new requires a mix of resources,” Miner said.

District 1

Candidates for District 1 offered varying views on how to raise the school district’s academic performance, especially after the state’s preliminary grades for district schools included a number of traditionally high-ranking schools dropping letter grades.

The district also dropped overall, although officials said once grades are finalized for two high schools, the overall district grade may move back up to a B grade from a C.

More money isn’t the answer, Schaich said, but better management of existing money to help the lowest-achieving schools will help.

“In the past, the practice was to buy every program out there and give them to the teachers,” said Schaich, a community activist. “It was throwing up stuff against the wall to see what sticks.”

Viltz, an executive and educator, said the lowest-achieving schools actually showed the most gains this year when looking at school grades. With the information available, Viltz said improving academics can come from data.

“We need to dissect the data in a lot more detail than we have in the past. The issue isn’t the need for more programs. We have to be mindful,” he said.

Retaining and recruiting teachers was essential to Bailey, a business owner and volunteer, and Messenger, a former teacher. They both advocated teachers need to be paid more.

“It costs us so much money to retrain teachers every single year after we hire them. It would be more cost effective just to pay them better and retain them,” Messenger said.

Both Bailey and Messenger also said that voters and those in the community should be better educated as to why they should want to invest in education.

“We have to get out to the voters and the taxpayers that it’s worth paying a little bit more for education,” Bailey said.

This story was originally published August 3, 2016 at 6:32 PM with the headline "At Bradenton Herald forum, differences emerge among school board candidates."