Center Grove candidates talk teacher pay, budgets and more at forum

The Center Grove Education Foundation held a candidate forum for voters to get to know where candidates stand on key issues Tuesday night.

Incumbents Amy Counts and Rob Daniels and candidates Dr. Charity Flores and Nicole Kemp discussed key issues facing Center Grove Schools, school safety, the budget and teacher retention. Candidate Robbie Williams was absent. Candidates agreed that Center Grove does a good job when it comes to school safety, but disagreed on how to retain teachers and budget priorities.

Counts is a mother of three Center Grove students and a commercial lender at Regions Bank. She is the mother of three Center Grove students, a 2018 graduate, a freshman and a sixth grader, she said.

Daniels is an attorney and a 1989 Center Grove graduate. His wife and daughters have also graduated from Center Grove. He is running to “preserve the reputation and legacy” of Center Grove, he said.

Flores graduated with a degree in elementary education from Anderson University and a doctorate in 2015, she said. All of her jobs have been in education and she is running for school board to serve her community in the education capacity, she said.

Kemp, a 1995 graduate, volunteers at Center Grove schools and works as a substitute teacher. Her husband and daughter both graduated from Center Grove and her son is a current student. Kemp is also the co-founder of Every Kid Eats Johnson County, an organization that helps pay off school lunch debt.

Each candidate was given two minutes to answer each question. Candidates could not respond to each other directly but could address questions in their closing statements.

Key Issues

For Daniels, there is an umbrella of key issues facing the district, including finding funding to provide a quality education for students and fair and equitable teacher pay, he said. Making sure every student has a chance to succeed is one challenge the district should make a priority. He wants to make sure every student has an “opportunity to get an exceptional educational experience” and focus on driving extracurricular.

Flores wants to focus on keeping students in the district to drive fiscal dollars to the school, she said. She wants to focus on understanding why students are leaving the district and use that to develop a plan to get them to stay. Addressing the root cause would give the district more flexibility in terms of financial resources. Flores is also passionate about addressing the needs of each student and addressing reading proficiency, she said.

Kemp wants to focus on the “out of control,” classroom sizes. She is passionate about teacher pay and wants to see them paid more equitably. More teachers should also be brought in to keep classroom sizes small. She would also like to see the board cap classroom sizes in the teacher’s contract, she said.

Counts would like see teacher pay increase and said class sizes are an issue the district is still searching for the best solution on. She is also focused on preparing to implement Indiana’s proposed new diploma. The standards are shaping up better now than before, but the district should “keep their thumb” on the proposed diploma and make sure that it’s fully understood, she said.

Academic Programs

When it comes to academic programs, Flores is most concerned about foundational skills, remediation and supporting students who need extra help to reach state reading standards, she said. Center Grove does a “great job” thinking about enrollment in early college but should think more about employment opportunities. Center Grove should start fostering collaborative relationships to prepare for new diploma requirements, she said.

Not everyone learns the same way and the district should think more about students who learn better through other avenues, Kemp said. Center Grove is offering more pathways for students such as the robotics pathways and opportunities through Central Nine, but Kemp said the district should continue to explore opportunities for students in college and career readiness. The more pathways that can be developed, the better, she said.

Counts agrees that Center Grove has “great offerings” for students when it comes to pathways, but spots at Central Nine can be limited, she said. Counts thinks the school district should look at creating more opportunities for students who miss out on the Central Nine education because of enrollment capacity.

Daniels is also proud of the offerings that Center Grove has and thinks others should be too, he said. The district should focus on those opportunities and continue “to provide support for those strong programs,” he said. Those conversations are already happening and Center Grove will continue to overcome the challenges the state legislature pushes on schools, he said.

Teacher Retention

A key part of teacher retention for Kemp is making sure teachers have a competitive pension. Many teacher’s pensions are “not even comparable” to the highest-paid administrators in the school, she said. Kemp believes new perspectives need to be taken into consideration and that teachers should always have a seat at the table for talks on retention. Center Grove should also help teachers maintain their classrooms through fiscal avenues, she said.

Counts believes teacher retention has less to do with teachers leaving for other schools and more to do with teachers leaving the profession altogether, she said. This should involve administrators from each school working on retention with their building teachers. Having those conversations with teachers and administrators present is what “needs to start happening,” she said. Counts encouraged teachers and administrators to approach the board with any ideas or issues they may have on retention.

Daniels understands the important role that teachers play in school systems, he said. Center Grove needs to retain the best and the brightest teachers and figure out a way to pay young teachers more, he said. The district is getting creative with negotiations, listening to teacher’s needs, and trying to reach a middle ground, he said. A good starting point is paying teachers more and listening to what issues are important to them, he said.

Teacher retention is multifaceted, Flores said. Teachers should be paid more, but state funding is also complex. The district should keep in mind the number of students that it has and the number of students transitioning out of the corporation. If they can come up with a way to keep students in the district, it would allow for additional funds, she said. Conversations about teacher retention are happening at the state and national levels and having a seat at the table during those conversations could help with teacher retention, she said. Teachers should have increased access to resources such as professional development or technology to make their jobs easier, she said.

Budget Priorities

The biggest need for Center Grove’s budget is more funds, Daniels said. They either need to bring in more students than they are losing or work with the state to redo the funding formula so they are not in the bottom 20, he said. When looking at the budget, board members need to prioritize students in every dollar they spend. The board also needs to pay young teachers more and listen to their needs, he said.

Center Grove should create a 10-year plan with data to help manage the budget well, Flores said. The board should treat the money as if it were their own and not carry a lot of debt, she said. The number of facilities being built translates over to the debt that Center Grove carries when the school builds new facilities without the funds to recover the expenses, it makes budgeting problematic, she said.

Kemp agrees with Flores and thinks a lot about school aesthetics, she said. Center Grove invests in “making things prettier and nicer” when there are other things that they could be doing with their funding, she said. Center Grove is losing money to the state’s voucher program and should go to the state legislature to address it, she said.

Counts said the administrative team and the board talk about the budget all year long. Big projects for the district are discussed seven years in advance and are prioritized, she said. One thing that will help with the budget in the future, is a guaranteed energy savings project that will bring savings through energy efficiency, she said.

A live stream of the forum can be viewed on Center Grove Education Foundation’s Facebook page.