Children Motivate the Candidates

By Barbara Hollingsworth

By Barbara Hollingsworth

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

With hopes of improving schools for their children, Patrick Woods and Bill Reid will face each other April 3 in the Topeka Unified School District 501 board election.

Reid comes to the campaign with the background of being an active parent at McEachron Elementary School, where his son is in third grade and his 3-year-old daughter eventually will attend school. Last school year, he was active in lobbying for safety improvements and additional classroom space at McEachron. The school got several mobile units installed to ease crowding this fall.

In a previous job, Reid also worked for a small-colleges association and did some lobbying for the group. But he said he comes to the school board race as someone outside the education field – a parent who might see things a little differently.

“You really get into a mentality when you are in education to where you hear the same views and the same ideas over and over again,” Reid said.

Woods started getting interested in a run for the school board as he watched lawmakers debate school finance last year. He started attending school board meetings. And while his son is only 5 months old, Woods already represents the boy’s future school, Meadows Elementary, on the District Citizens Advisory Council.

“I am focused on winning this board seat, winning this election, going to work making sure no matter where you live in Topeka, you are guaranteed a high-quality, high-class education,” Woods said.

With increased funding from the state, Woods said, the district is at a pivotal point for addressing challenges, such as meeting the needs of at-risk students. He said he would work to ensure accountability for tax dollars, address safety and security issues at schools, plan for facility needs so schools don’t continue to become too overcrowded, expand preschool to every elementary school and improve middle schools.

And Woods said it will be important to improve working conditions for teachers, especially as schools face a growing teacher shortage. He said the school board should take seriously the results of a teacher survey completed last year, which was given throughout the state but also broke down results for individual districts and schools. Teachers need to be drawn into important talks, such as the already underway strategic planning.

“We just have to play with all our players,” said Woods, whose wife teaches in the district. “They are the eyes and ears of education literally. They have to be at the table.”

Reid said he wants the district to plan better to anticipate and address crowded facilities, consider a comprehensive safety program that looks at facility updates as well as bullying, expand preschool, improve communication with the community, give teachers more control over their curriculum and how they teach, and get teachers the training they need, including in working with children learning to speak English as their second language.

Also, Reid said the district shouldn’t neglect the arts and social studies, even at a time when No Child Left Behind puts the focus on math and reading.

“I think we are focusing just a little too hard on teaching these kids how to take tests and on the math and the reading, that we’re not focusing on what makes them real people and able to function in the world outside,” he said.

Barbara Hollingsworth can be reached at (785) 295-1285 or barbara.hollingsworth@cjonline.com.

(c) 2007 Topeka Capital Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.