Bright / Mitchell

LITTLEFIELD  —  Six identical questions were posed  to the two candidates for Seat A on the Pitt County Board of Education.

Mary Grace Bright, appointed two years ago to fill the unexpired term of the late Jack Collins defeated Charles Mitchell in a special election held later to complete Collins’ term.

Mitchell challenges Ms. Bright again for the seat in District 6, this time for a 6-year term of office.

Ms. Bright has resided in Grifton for 23 years and has three children. One child has finished school while her son, Tab, is a rising junior at Ayden-Grifton and her daughter, Elizabeth, is a rising fifth grader at Grifton School. She is married to Tim Bright, a Grifton native.

Mitchell, 58, was born and reared in Grifton. He has one son, Charles Jr., a deputy sheriff. He has been active in youth league sports in the area and has been involved with the Ayden-Grifton High School booster club. He drives the activity bus for the high school basketball team, cheerleaders and runs the score clocks at ball games. He is married to the former Sandy Sugg, an Ayden native.

QUESTION 1: What are your qualifications for the office you seek and do you have time to handle the responsibilities entrusted to you if elected?

Ms. Bright: “My qualifications are that I’ve served on the board for 2 1/2 years. During that time, I have been, I think, an exceptionally conscientious board member, attended all meetings that I’m supposed to attend. I’ve studied the materials that we are presented so that I’m well versed in the issues that we’re involved with. Again, I’ve always been involved, even before being on the board, been involved in the schools, as PTA President, just generally been supportive of the schools that my children attended.”

“Yes (I have time to handle the responsibilities). We don’t have a lot of day meetings. Most of our meetings are late afternoon and at night and I have been able to work out when I have day meetings that I just flex my schedule or I take a vacation day or a personal leave day. My job is not a straight 8-5, it’s a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year job.”

Mr. Mitchell: “My qualifications are more of a common-sense approach than anything else. I’ve got a two-year degree in mechanics, industrial maintenance. I’m a planner and scheduler at Dupont. I see a lot of ways to save money in doing stuff. As far as a formal education that would prepare me for a board of education job, I probably don’t have any, other than just a pure 35 years or so since I’ve been out of school working, trying to raise a family, working with the Jaycees, baseball and the athletics, and the children. But it’s probably more common sense than anything else. My company that I work for, if I’m elected to a public office, will give me the time.”

QUESTION 2: There are a lot of good things going on at Ayden-Grifton High School, however, overall student achievement is not at appropriate levels. Why is this and what would you do to change it?

Mr. Mitchell: “I think you need to really bring the discipline of all students in the school period, not just high school but anywhere. If you don’t have the discipline, the respect of the students, you’ll never get to where you need to be. Students that are disruptive are going to disrupt for every person in the classroom. It’s shot their whole day. If we can get the behavioral problems, the disruptions, out of the school system, put some discipline in, I think we’ll be a whole lot better. When I went to school, the average class size was probably 30 and if you got out of line, the teachers disciplined you right then. They didn’t wait and they didn’t have any problems. We’ve taken discipline out of schools, to a degree. I think we need to put it back. That would correct a whole lot of problems.

Ms. Bright: “I don’t think that we’ve done a good enough job of identifying why children are not being successful in high school and I think we have got to spend some time identifying why they are not successful, why they are having difficulties and then we need to be extraordinarily creative in how we help them to be successful. I think that the children that are not being successful, it’s because they don’t learn, or respond, to the material that’s being presented to them and I think that a lot of the kids that are not ‘being successful’ are kids that are very capable of being successful and I think given the proper instruction and the proper resources, they can be very successful.”

QUESTION 3: If the Principal of a school is critical to educational excellence at that school what will you do to assure the success of any principal in Pitt County?

Ms. Bright: “I think it’s important for school board members to be supportive of principals, to give principals the backing that they need to be successful, to give them the resources that they need to be successful. And by that, I don’t necessarily mean financial resources. I think there are a lot of resources, you know, hooking them up with people in the community, that can help them or with volunteers in the community that are willing to come in and work with kids. I think there’s a whole lot of different types of resources that can be accessed.”

Mr. Mitchell: “A superintendent is the person that needs to be dealing with principals to start with. That’s his/her job. But I don’t think you can have a principal that’s critical (if I’m understanding the question correctly) of the education opportunities and the way the children are working at a particular school. We should back the superintendent in working with the principals at a certain school or situation to ensure that they get what they need to be successful in their job and if it’s just a flat out attitude thing that they don’t like the particular region, location, school, you know, maybe they’re not the right person for the job. You don’t want to hire people and a year later, disrupt them, move them out 6 months later, 2 years. You need a certain amount of peaceful coexistence. Everybody gets along. The community gets comfortable with a person that they’re going to do what needs to be done at their school to ensure their students are safe and have all the learning opportunities in the world.”

QUESTION 4: Pitt County has adopted a High School Plan. Block scheduling is one piece of the new schedule model for all of Pitt County. Block scheduling is purported to offer more opportunities for students. What is your opinion of block scheduling?

Mr. Mitchell: “I don’t like it. I do not like block scheduling. We had 7 periods scheduled at A-G. In 4 years, you had 28 subjects that you could take. You’ve gone now to block scheduling which says you can take 32. But if everything’s not working just right, if the teachers are not doing everything to their maximum ability to teach you and people’s students, attention span, are they going to be able to sit there for an hour and a half in that classroom and study one particular thing over and over.? In 6 months you’ve got to be through with it. I heard a parent, as a matter of fact, it was a teacher. Her daughter’s doing her summer reading now, but she found she won’t be able to take her AP English until the second semester of this year, after Christmas. All her summer reading, it’s just like math, if you don’t use math regularly, you lose it. All your algebras and geometries and stuff. If you don’t take one, you take the first part of your freshman year, the second part of your sophomore year. You’ve got over a year in there that you haven’t done anything in the world with. I don’t like it. I think the 7, 45 minute periods we had up until last year is a better schedule. Now for some students, it would be great. But in our particular case at AG, I don’t think it would be the best thing for us. If you got all 4.0 students that’s going to be doctors, top level professional people, it may be good for them, but for the larger percentage of people, I don’t’ think it would be good.”

Mrs. Bright: “I was initially opposed to block scheduling. Because we chose to go that way, I’m going to support it and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that it works and that it’s effective for our children. I think it does offer children more opportunities. I’m concerned that for some children, it may offer them less opportunities if they are trying to take AP courses, but I think we’re going to have a year or two that we’re going to have to iron the kinks out, so to speak, to figure out what will ultimately be the best way for it to be effective for our kids.”

QUESTION 5: There is a move afoot in the North Carolina legislature to take another look at teacher tenure. Do you support teacher tenure? Explain why or why not?

Mrs. Bright: “I think that we need ways to reward good teachers and ways to get rid of not-so-good teachers. I think for those teachers who are not performing as we would like them to perform, that we need to offer them every opportunity and every bit of training that we can to help them get where we need them. But then we need an easy, efficient way to get rid of teachers that are not educating our children.”

Mr. Mitchell: “Tenure is a good thing if it’s used right. If you just use tenure to keep your job propped up, and if you fail to be effective in your teaching and you just quit and you got tenure, something needs to change with that. But if you’re doing your job right and you’re just having a personality conflict or whatever with the particular administrator, tenure in that part is good. But tenure as a job crutch, that “I’ve got tenure now I don’t have to do anything,” I don’t like that part of it. That part probably needs to be changed, be addressed. As tenure was intended, the intent of it, it’s a good thing. It’s just like unions. Unions when they first came out, tenure is basically the same thing, where it’s good for the people. It protected their jobs. It protected their pay and everything, but unions that cripple a company and get outrageous moneys and demands, they aren’t good.

QUESTION 6: Tell us one thing about you that you believe will make you the best candidate for the District 6 Seat A Board of Education post?

Mr. Mitchell: “I’ve got the kids best interest at heart. I’ve got the voters, the parents, the teachers interest as well. I don’t think we can give away the world to give our children at least a good sound basic education but I think we need to do what is needed to make sure our children are well-educated, have as many opportunities afforded to them as anybody else. The “No Child Left Behind Act”. There’s flaws in that. The concept is good but I don’t think that it’s going to all work as they are saying because to have NO child, absolutely zero, I really don’t think it’s an attainable goal. It’s a goal. It’s an admirable goal to try and reach that. But with the migrant population growing in this area and some of those people when they come in can’t even speak English, I don’t see how you can expect them to be at grade level in 6-8 more years. I don’t see how you can do that. I want to go places with our children. I want to them to be looked at as having the best, not necessarily just the best buildings, but I want the best teachers, the best principals, administrators, the best facilities that we can afford. Now we can’t always afford to outdo the new school down the road that just got built in the next county but when we replace something, we need to replace it with quality material, both in educational means, buildings, teachers. I mean why replace a teacher with a lesser teacher. We need more teachers all the time. There’s not enough teachers. There’s not enough, there’s just so much, in my opinion that needs to be done different. We got more administrators, more counselors and more high level administrators in the county than the state average per student. We’ve got less teachers than the state average. Why? It looks to me like that every one of them high level administrators, you could probably put 3 teachers in a classroom for each one of them. If you got 5 or 6 above the state average, why not put 15 teachers in classrooms. I don’t see why you need to keep adding more counselors and more administrators and high level administrators like the office in Greenville than you got teachers on average.

Ms. Bright: “Because I care about kids, I try to make very thoughtful, rational decisions based on the issues at hand and not get distracted by non-related issues. I think I’m very thoughtful and I do my homework and I do what it takes to be a responsible board member and whether that be attending meetings, doing the homework to be prepared for those meetings, visiting the schools, talking with parents, talking with teachers, talking with principals, I feel like I’ve done a really good job doing all of those things and am very conscientious about doing all of those things.”

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