School Board Candidates Meet The Public -- District 2, Delores Hearn, Courtney Walters
Posted
Jennifer Peryam-jperyam@timesuniononline.com
Candidates running for the Warsaw Community Schools District 2 school board seat shared their views on school issues Thursday night.
Incumbent Delores Hearn, Leesburg, and Courtney Walters, Warsaw, are vying for the seat.
Hearn is a mother of three Warsaw graduates, and a former teacher and school psychologist.
Walters currently has five children, three of which are in the Warsaw school system.
Hearn said working in five area school corporations has given her the sensitivity to and the awareness of the issues and challenges facing teachers and children.
Walters' great-great-grandfather, J.O. Zimmer, rooted several generations locally with the foundation of Zimmer. She attended Indiana University Bloomington, IPFW and Grace College to pursue a special education degree. Over the past 10 years she has worked as a volunteer in Warsaw Community School Corp.
During the forum, both candidates gave an opening statement, answered four pre-selected questions and audience questions before giving a closing statement.
The candidates were asked by the American Association of University Women: What do you consider Warsaw Community Schools' greatest strength and greatest challenges and what should the priorities be for the future of the school district?
Hearn said the strength is the district's staff and the diverse programming they provide to meet individual needs of the diverse student population.
"Diverse programming is provided through the use of teams of teachers and administrative staff working together to find best practice programs and methods of instruction to meet each individual students' needs," Hearn said.
Hearn said a challenge is tailoring teaching and learning to each student's needs and keeping records of each child's progress.
Hearn said a priority should be raising the achievement levels of each individual child and increasing the graduation rate.
Walters said the district's strength is the administrators and staff.
"They aren't there for the money. They are there for the kids. Warsaw Community Schools represents a love for children through the staff who change lives daily, and whose personal lives are also changed," Walters said.
Walters said a challenge is trust in administrators, teachers, staff and the superintendent.
"The administrators and teachers are being asked to do monotonous tasks repeatedly which takes away their time from students due to lack of trust," Walters said.
She said, for example, administrators are asked to fill out paperwork for teacher trainings within their own buildings, but the funding is already there for them to use.
"I am all for accountability and what the money is being used for, but there comes a point where it stops being accountability and turns into babysitting," Walters said.
Walters said a priority should be teacher funding.
"When you start cutting at the teacher level, you start affecting the children," Walters said.
A patron asked the candidates, "When you are visiting the school as a school board member and notice there is not enough materials and resources for their curriculum is that a concern for you and how would you fix that?"
Hearn said teachers and administrators must work together to make sure teachers have what they need. She said, as a school board member, she meets with the teachers union and receives feedback of problems and concerns and figures out ways to address them.
Walters said teachers should work with parent-teachers organizations to make sure they have supplies they need.
An audience member said special needs and at-risk student funding is serviced, but asked what is being done to assist funding for gifted students.
Hearn said spending is decided by working with the community. She said there are a lot of community partners that work in the schools with students at many levels, and there are foundations that write grants to help the schools.
Walters said there needs to be policies that service every child. She said for gifted students, the school could partner with OrthoWorx, who could share their expertise in math, technology and science.
