SMCISD Candidate Toby Hooper Sits Down With Corridor News
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Q 1: If elected, what will you do to build consensus, community support and help lead our school district forward?
Toby: Focus the community on the child. I mean, get everyone energized and excited, because investing in your child, investing in someone else’s child, investing in children in our community makes everybody’s lives better. As an advocate, I am not going to be passive. I am going to be active. As I say that, I don’t mean I am going to be micromanaging principals and teachers. I am going to be in the community asking for great ideas, asking for participation, and I’ll be asking for people to include children and the district in whatever they do. If they make a big plan in the community, I am going to say where do children factor into this? Because as I told the republicans last night, and I was thanking them for having their candidate forum, I said for an organization, meaning the school district, to be entrusted with the development of the community’s children, it is the least, it is the most unattended I will say of any activity in town just about. So little people get out and vote, so little participate. That has got to change.
Q 2: What is the ideal relationship between board and superintendent?
Toby: A good working relationship that is respectful of each other’s roles. The superintendent is the leader of the faculty and staff so in essence the board selects that person as the chief officer and the board dictates, or communicates rather, that’s a better word, communicates the expectations to that person and develops the goals together. I think it is important to do that together.
Q 3: Do you agree that the superintendent should sit at the head of the dais and help lead the meeting or should meetings be similar in structure and format to that of our city council?
Toby: Good question. I would like to see it as more like city council, where just like the city manager sits off the dais, I think the superintendent should as well. Really I would like to reconfigure the whole way that we, the board, sit. I don’t think it necessarily has to be on the dais. But at the same time I think when you have a public meeting, the public should easily be able to see, but I do think that the board and superintendent should have a way that they can easily work together.
Q 4: Although there were funds allocated in the May 2013 Bond Election our school board recently spent an additional $850,000 purchasing a score board for our district’s new Multi-Purpose Athletic Stadium using funds from our district’s reserve accounts. Do you agree or support this purchase?
Toby: For me on any expenditure, it is about return on investment. That ROI, I just don’t see how that expenditure is going to get us great returns. And let me give you a connected place where that money could have gone. It could have gone into directly gone to the teacher’s benefit package in some way. I mean that money could have been put right into instruction, that money could have paid any health benefits for teachers, making the district more attractive, any of those things. That would make a direct impact on children. A big score board, you know, makes us look really interesting and shiny, but that isn’t going to get us to our great goal that is increasing achievement and the development of our students.
Q 5: In what instances do you deem it is appropriate to utilize our district’s fund balance?
Toby: I think it all has to be in line with the goal and strategic plan. Let me say this, we need a strategic plan. A strategic plan that has clearly defined goals and with that all resources line up. So the fund balance would be one of those resources. Of course the fund balance isn’t a pot of gold that number is put together by different sources. It really is a like number that is part of an accounting procedure. Anyway, back to my point. We have got to have clearer goals, a strategic plan and then the fund balance then using any part of it would fall into utilizing that plan.
Q 6: Do you support the way our current board is elected? If given the opportunity, would you keep our five single member district and two at-large trustee system of representation the same?
Toby: I think on a periodic basis we should reevaluate redistricting, redrawing the lines and going out to the community to ask their ideas and their proposals about how to reconfigure that.
Q 7: Do you think televising school board meetings is important? If elected, how long do you think it will take until our school district begins televising meetings?
Toby: The answer to that question is yes, most definitely and it will happen if I am elected.
Q 8: The Texas Education Agency’s 2013-2014 Texas Academic Performance Report for San Marcos CISD tells us that only 44% of San Marcos High School graduates are deemed college ready in both math and language arts. Is this acceptable?
Toby: No it is not acceptable and I think the factor that we need to explore is how much emphasis we put into direct instruction. If you compare us to other school districts, they spend more on instruction and I think if we put more resources there and reduce class sizes all those things, we are going to see positive results. Again, if we have don’t set goals, identifying something like that with a strategic plan, we are not going to be able to identify our resources that we have in order to realize that. So again, that is not acceptable and we need to reevaluate that.