Six candidates squared off for three open seats on the Leander ISD Board of Trustees at a candidate forum on Oct. 24. From left to right, candidates Chris Remy, Pam Waggoner, Grace Barber-Jordan, Scott Rowe, Jim MacKay and Russell Bundy discuss issues affecting the district.
By CASSIE MCKEE
Four Points News
The Leander ISD Board of Trustees candidate forum drew an audience of about 100 community members on Oct. 24 at Vandegrift High School. Three board members are up for re-election and each face a challenger. In place 3, incumbent Pam Waggoner is being challenged by Chris Remy. In place 4, incumbent Grace Barber-Jordan is being challenged by Scott Rowe. In Place 5, incumbent Russell Bundy is being challenged by Jim MacKay.
The following are a few of the questions posed to the candidates and the candidates’ responses in their own words.
Place 3
To what extent are you comfortable with the state’s testing culture? What specific proposals would you promote that help students succeed in this culture while ensuring that we are not merely teaching to the tests?
Pam Waggoner: We take our information and our orders from the state. The state is always going to want accountability, so we are going to have to be accountable to the state. What we really need is a test that’s appropriate for the age level of our children. Not just the age level but also the material in which it covers. I spoke out against high stakes testing this year by writing a resolution against high stakes testing which we did present to the Legislature and we got over 3,000 signatures on that. So I have been an advocate against high stakes testing but I do believe in accountability and I do believe we have to hold our students accountable because you want to know where you stand in the state against other districts of like size and quality to know if you’re doing a good job or not. I believe tests have to be trying to get to something, they shouldn’t be punitive to the children. They shouldn’t be punitive to the school district or the school. They should allow the teacher to teach and this is merely to see where the students stand in conjunction to all the other students. It shouldn’t be about punishing the students or rating the school district A through F. It should be about helping the students and helping the district to get better and to succeed.
Remy: This is one of the issues that got me involved and turned me overnight from being a parent to being an education advocate. There are many flaws with the STAAR test and with the overall accountability regime. In terms of specific proposals, I’m not opposed to testing, I think testing is very good for Texas kids when you think about having over 1,000 districts, how else do you tell whether that money’s being well spent and how else do you compare districts to one another? The problem is it’s gotten totally out of control. My specific proposal I call is “Rejecting the Culture of the Test.” Just because we have to administer the test and just because we’re going to use it to judge how well we’re performing against other districts, doesn’t mean it needs to dominate the entire school year. When you think about when you were a kid, if you took the Iowa test, you showed up with your #2 pencil one day, you took the test and you never heard about it again. There’s nothing stopping us from doing that tomorrow in Leander ISD. In fact they’re doing it in Hudson ISD where Mary Ann Whiteker banned the word STAAR from everyone’s vocabulary, stopped sending any more STAAR test sheets home, not pressuring teachers or students over their scores and she called this her new vision. She was the “Superintendent of the Year” last year. I think this would be a great model for us to follow, to take the pressure off everyone. Just let teachers teach and students learn and let’s leave the test as an important data collection tool but not have it be the be-all, end-all to the entire school year.
