Candidate Q&A
DeSoto County School District
School Board Election 2022
Our public education questionnaire was offered to school board candidates in the November 8 school board elections. Search below for responses from board districts that have opposing candidates. Unopposed candidates are not included.
District 1
Josh Sullivan
WINNER
NO RESPONSE
James Eric Wright
1. What has been your involvement with the community and school district? Describe your leadership and volunteerism in the community. Did you or your children attend school in the district? Have you volunteered in or been employed by the school district? My son entered Lewisburg High this year and is a member of the Lewisburg Band. My wife and I volunteer with the Band working concessions for the football program. Separate from that, I am a minister and I have worked with children via youth programming and functions. Both my wife and I graduated from Olive Branch High, my daughter graduated from Lewisburg High, and I have two boys that are students at Lewisburg High and Lewisburg Middle presently. I have never been employed by the School District.
2. Why do you want to serve on your school board? It is my opportunity to continue to give back to the community that I grew up in. I want to continue to be part of my kids journey. I want to help to ensure that the kids for example in SPED and kids with mental health challenges have a voice and that their parents have an advocate. I want to ensure equity in education, equity in disciplinary decisions, and equity in opportunities to learn and grow. I have a servant mentality and I want to make the DeSoto County School Board even better and even more sought after. I am a hard worker and would do the same for the Board.
3. Students from low-income households often need additional resources to achieve academic success. What should your school district do to ensure that all students are successful? I would encourage the district to create opportunities to raise the needed funds by communicating the goals and being inclusive in the planning and execution of our cooperative planning. We have to be willing to put in the work. We have to be willing to face the simple truths and find a way to overcome.
4. What strategies would you support to create a safer school environment? What can your school district do to address cyberbullying, mental health, and physical safety? I love the strategy that we currently employ with Security Resource Officers (SRO’s). We can also branch out to parent participation to enhance our security efforts. We can also work on our current infrastructure when it comes to access to Wi-Fi at our schools. In the event of an emergency, there are dead spots throughout our schools that there is not any coverage. If something happens, we need to be able to communicate seamlessly to address what may come our way.
5. What do you see as the most pressing infrastructure needs facing your district? Our district is continually growing. With that growth, our student to teacher ratio and school capacity are two things that we will continue to face. Second to our growth is access to a viable Wi-Fi connection as I stated previously.
6. Mississippi school districts are funded by a mix of federal, state, and local funds. The state contributes to local school districts through the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP). MAEP is intended to fund teacher salaries, retirement and benefits, transportation costs, facility maintenance and utilities, special education and other programs, but it is underfunded statewide this year by $279-million. What role will you play in advocating for full funding of MAEP for your district? No response.
7. Vouchers for private school tuition and online schools divert public funds away from public schools. Do you agree that tax dollars should be used for only public schools and not for non-public schools? Why or why not? Tax dollars should be used only for public schools. Our contributions should be for the kids and communities that we serve.
8. In Mississippi, academic standards are set by the Mississippi Department of Education and local districts choose curricula from an MDE approved list. Do you trust educators in your district to teach using their professional judgement and training or should teaching be further regulated by school board policy or law? If you believe teaching should be further regulated, how so? We should trust educators to teach using their professional judgement and training. Those educators have invested their time, energy, and financial means to be in a position to serve. I would like to leave that up to the school systems. This does not take away my obligation to be the first teachers to my children and to share with them what I think is important for them to be successful.
9. Mississippi is experiencing a severe teacher shortage. What strategies will you support to recruit and retain high quality educators? I think if we want the best students, we need the best teachers this nation can provide. That said, we have to look outside our school systems, outside our region, and our state to see what is working in other places. But it begins early on. Our school systems should control the narrative, grow our teachers from within, and provide comparable compensation packages for our teachers. We should also continue to train our teachers, and add programming and forums that they can share their grievances and also share their successes. Finally, we must recognize that role as a position of honor in our communities.
District 2
Michele Henley
WINNER
1. What has been your involvement with the community and school district? Describe your leadership and volunteerism in the community. Did you or your children attend school in the district? Have you volunteered in or been employed by the school district? I attended Horn Lake schools from first grade through graduation. Three of my daughters have graduated from DeSoto County Schools and I have a daughter in middle school in the district. I have volunteered in many capacities in schools. I’ve worked with book fairs, been room mother, volunteered in the cafeteria, had lunch duty so teachers could have a break during lunch, as well as numerous other areas. I have also been employed in the district in the special education classroom.
2. Why do you want to serve on your school board? During my first term, we have worked hard to improve many areas of our schools and I want to keep working to improve things even more. We were able to give our teachers and assistants raises that are well deserved. We added a nurse to each campus as well as worked with law enforcement to add SROs to each campus.
3. Students from low-income households often need additional resources to achieve academic success. What should your school district do to ensure that all students are successful? Our district already has plans in place to ensure every student has everything they need to be completely successful. Our teachers and staff go above and beyond to help each student achieve their individual success.
4. What strategies would you support to create a safer school environment? What can your school district do to address cyberbullying, mental health, and physical safety? DeSoto County Schools has made every effort to ensure the physical and mental safety of every student and staff. We regularly evaluate how well our measures are working and if any changes need to be made.
5. What do you see as the most pressing infrastructure needs facing your district? The most pressing need we have is keeping up with the continued growth our district is seeing and ensuring we have the space for students entering our district.
6. Mississippi school districts are funded by a mix of federal, state, and local funds. The state contributes to local school districts through the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP). MAEP is intended to fund teacher salaries, retirement and benefits, transportation costs, facility maintenance and utilities, special education and other programs, but it is underfunded statewide this year by $279-million. What role will you play in advocating for full funding of MAEP for your district? I talk to our legislators and emphasize how important I feel it is for full funding of MAEP. We meet with them regularly and voice our concerns as a board also.
7. Vouchers for private school tuition and online schools divert public funds away from public schools. Do you agree that tax dollars should be used for only public schools and not for non-public schools? Why or why not? I do not believe vouchers should be an option in schools.
8. In Mississippi, academic standards are set by the Mississippi Department of Education and local districts choose curricula from an MDE approved list. Do you trust educators in your district to teach using their professional judgement and training or should teaching be further regulated by school board policy or law? If you believe teaching should be further regulated, how so? I trust the teachers in our district. We have specialists and coordinators who work with our teachers.
9. Mississippi is experiencing a severe teacher shortage. What strategies will you support to recruit and retain high quality educators? We have recruiters who work hard to get teachers in our district. We also host a teacher fair every year to bring potential candidates to our district. Also, we have given our teachers and assistants raises above what the legislators approved. This helps recruit and retain teachers.
April Wright
1. What has been your involvement with the community and school district? Describe your leadership and volunteerism in the community. Did you or your children attend school in the district? Have you volunteered in or been employed by the school district? I have two children attending Desoto County Schools. They are in Kindergarten and Third grade. I am on the PTO for both schools and attend meetings and volunteer for activities as much as possible. I love helping with the book fairs since I have a background as a librarian.
2. Why do you want to serve on your school board? I want a diverse school board that represents everyone. It is important to see a variety of ages, races, ethnicity, gender, conservative, and liberal backgrounds. I feel it is important to have board members with children in our schools. I speak with parents, students, and teachers at work and would like to represent their interests.
3. Students from low-income households often need additional resources to achieve academic success. What should your school district do to ensure that all students are successful? I would like to ensure each child has internet access at home by providing hot spot devices and tablets if needed. I would like to reinstate free lunches for everyone, if you are hungry you are not learning. I would love to see a partnership between the schools and public libraries to allow students to utilize the large collection offered by First Regional even if they cannot come to the branches.
4. What strategies would you support to create a safer school environment? What can your school district do to address cyberbullying, mental health, and physical safety? Mental health is so important. As a parent of a child with chronic illness, I know how important it is to have a trusted adult to talk to. It can be challenging obtaining care without missing school. Small group meetings held at schools monthly for parents/students/staff could be a great opportunity to provide some of these services. Cyberbullying is a topic that could be addressed in computer classes as well as during the regular class visits by the school counselor. Pleasant Hill recently had a wonderful program on cyberbullying that could be beneficial system-wide. Recently my daughter’s school was on lock down for a potential threat, fortunately it was a false alarm. Thanks to drills and amazing teachers the kids knew exactly what to do and there was a swift, amazing response from local law enforcement. This is only one aspect of physical safety. Fighting and altercations may benefit from better mental health care and strict discipline for bullying (but NOT using corporal punishment).
5. What do you see as the most pressing infrastructure needs facing your district? Our schools are at capacity and classrooms are overcrowded. We need more schools and teachers.
6. Mississippi school districts are funded by a mix of federal, state, and local funds. The state contributes to local school districts through the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP). MAEP is intended to fund teacher salaries, retirement and benefits, transportation costs, facility maintenance and utilities, special education and other programs, but it is underfunded statewide this year by $279-million. What role will you play in advocating for full funding of MAEP for your district? No response.
7. Vouchers for private school tuition and online schools divert public funds away from public schools. Do you agree that tax dollars should be used for only public schools and not for non-public schools? Why or why not? I believe there should be a set amount allowed for private schools, but the majority should go towards public schools. All children deserve a great education.
8. In Mississippi, academic standards are set by the Mississippi Department of Education and local districts choose curricula from an MDE approved list. Do you trust educators in your district to teach using their professional judgement and training or should teaching be further regulated by school board policy or law? If you believe teaching should be further regulated, how so? I believe we should focus on teaching and not on preparing for state tests. I feel there should be guidelines for teachers and approved lesson plans, but if we trust teachers to take care of our children we should trust their judgement on curriculum.
9. Mississippi is experiencing a severe teacher shortage. What strategies will you support to recruit and retain high quality educators? Our teachers deserve more money, more support, and more respect. They work hard and provide most classroom supplies themselves. We need to do better. We need more money to pay teachers and pay for their supplies. Teachers need more breaks and time off. Our children deserve small class sizes. We need to examine our budget and find grants to help with funding. This is also an opportunity to think outside of the box and explore other partnerships that can benefit our district.
