This week’s meeting was well attended, but very short due to the necessity of many members needing to attend another meeting that began at 7pm.  Nevertheless, the members were able to hear again from Board of Education candidate Janiece Wall, and to get in some informative Q-&-A with her.

The highlights, according to my notes, recollections, and follow-up:

Mrs. Wall is opposed to Common Core, and is particularly opposed to the curriculum changes that will be a consequence of it’s implementation.

She said that she was concerned about the Carteret County Schools budget, and that she would delve into the system’s budgets in an effort to understand them and to glean cost savings therefrom.

Although she could not think of any specific instances or issues with which she has or would disagree with Superintendent Dan Novey, she declared her willingness to do so when necessary.

When I posed subsequent questions on the issues of tenure and salaries her responses were as follows, with my slight editing for brevity and clarity:

CCTPP-QUESTION:  We have been told that North Carolina is “46th in the nation” in teacher pay.  It is a misleading statistic, however, as … no adjustments are made for state and regional costs of living, for differences in benefits, or for miscellaneous supplements.  So the question is, do you believe that the teachers in Carteret County are underpaid?

JW-ANSWER:  Yes, I believe all competent teachers in NC are underpaid.  Teachers are expected to go beyond the classroom every day in their duties.  Some examples are lunch duty, bus duty (morning & afternoon), teacher’s meetings, seminars, and parent conferences (without any comp time being given).

CCTPP-QUESTION:  The NC General Assembly enacted legislation last year that included … an attempt at converting teacher remuneration to a more merit based system that offered … bonuses to higher-performing teachers.  A condition was that teachers would have to give up … the tenure system over a period of time.  The two questions I have are, first, do you consider tenure to be a vested property right of teachers who have been awarded it, and second, do you favor or oppose the abolition of teacher tenure?

JW-ANSWER:  I believe we can continue to reward great teachers with tenure while removing unqualified teachers from the classroom.  Tenure should be earned by the teacher and given as a reward for excellence in the classroom — not guaranteed to all teachers after a few years of service.  A new teacher in NC is not considered for tenure until she enters her fourth year of teaching.  During the first three years, a mentor is assigned to evaluate the teacher with an assessment tool provided by the State.  If during this time, the teacher does not meet the State standard, tenure should not be given.  If a teacher is given tenure and becomes complacent in the classroom, there are legal alternatives to terminate her contract.

This account will conclude the posts devoted to assessing the ideological alignment of the primary candidates with the values and preferences of the Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots.  Our members will vote soon, and our selections will be named in about a week or so.

A final thanks is in order to all the candidates who were willing to appear at our group meetings to expose their personal backgrounds and policy beliefs to the scrutiny of our members.