During a recent forum hosted at WFSU, Leon County School Board candidates discussed a wide range of topics, from the district’s budget to the superintendent’s performance.
Current school board member Marcus Nicolas will face off against opponent James Reilly Jr in the race for the Leon County School Board’s District 5 seat. Both candidates said they have strong personal ties to the district, including children who are attending district-run schools. That’s one reason they said they care deeply about the future of Leon County Schools.
One of the issues Nicolas said he thinks is most pressing is funding.
The school district is facing a looming funding crisis. Nicolas said that comes from a decrease in student enrollment as well as rising costs. But he said he, and other school board members, have been looking for creative solutions.
“What individuals don't know is right now we are actually finding partners to co-locate in some of our schools to increase our income,” Nicolas said. “In some of our schools, we are also cutting nonessential programming that we could bring back. If we see a leveling off of our funding.”
Reilly said he’d like to see the board take a more proactive approach, and he said he thinks reducing top-level staff could be part of that answer.
“I also feel that we have a very top-heavy school system—I think that's proven,” he said. “We have more people than we need. We continue to hire more at the district level, and we need to cut those jobs instead of hiring more if we have less students.”
When asked to give Superintendent Rocky Hanna a letter grade for leadership over the past four years, the candidates gave answers that stood in sharp contrast.
“I'll take this one; I'd give him an F, and I'd like to see him be transparent,” Reilly said. “Instead of trying to work around certain things that he needs to do or he should be doing. I think it's no secret I have no confidence in the superintendent.”
On the other hand, Nicholas pointed to improvements in school grades and infrastructure investments that he said all came under Hanna’s leadership.
“So I don't see how you would give somebody who's performed like that an F, " he said. “That's just absolutely ridiculous. But I do think that there are some issues that we do have in our district, again, twenty-eight years where we have not seen a classification and compensation study… for that, I would give them a B minus C plus.”
You can watch the full candidate forum here.
Roni Graham is an intern for WFSU through Report for America's Local News Internship Program.
