Name as it appears on the ballot: Sam Hershey 

Age: 47 

Party affiliation: Democratic Party 

Campaign website: samforwake.com 

Occupation & employer: Wake School Board Member 

Years lived in the area: 26 years 

1. What are the three main issues that you believe the Wake County Public Schools Board of Education needs to address in the upcoming years? 

Academics: Teaching and learning are the core functions of all public-school districts and in 2023 we passed our new five-year strategic plan that sets high academic targets for the county, including 90% proficiency and 98% graduation rate by 2028. These goals far exceed both where our School District has been historically and current levels across the state. With our new Superintendent and our new chief of academics beginning to roll out changes, as a school board member I will push to remove barriers to academic success, increase advanced learning opportunities and do everything I can to support our students, families and staff as part of the whole child education approach.

Facilities Improvement: We have some significant renovations coming to District 6 schools at Sanderson HS and Mt. Vernon MS. Brentwood ES will be getting a new school, but we have more schools with needs. As part of a potential second term on the school board, it’s likely a bond will come before the school board to present to the county. I will work to make facility renovations the focal point of the new bond and work to improve processes to get small projects completed at schools. 

Staffing Shortages: This really could be listed as part of academics as having fully-staffed schools is critical to any aspect of student achievement. Of course, we don’t only have school-related staffing shortages, we also have shortages when it comes to maintenance and operations and bus drivers. Unfortunately, this can negatively impact our ability to get kids to school on time and keep schools open daily as we face hotter and hotter weather. 

2. Employee pay across the system has been a consistent concern, and while the board was able to raise wages for many workers this year, underfunding at the state level will likely persist. How can WCPSS remain competitive in terms of compensation, and how can the school system support its lowest paid workers who make less than $40,000/year on a 10-month pay schedule? 

I’m proud of the work we’ve done when it comes to raising pay for a number of our employees. We recognize the rising cost of living in Wake County makes it tougher on our employees to live in the area. In a strong and growing economy, it’s going to be difficult – if not impossible – to compete against private sector pay. We are fortunate to have county commissioners who have been very supportive of our efforts, but it’s going to be tough to remain competitive without the state doing its job by significantly raising teacher pay across the board and providing additional funding to not only Wake County Public Schools but all public school systems across North Carolina. 

3. Do you support the Biden administration’s new federal Title IX rules that ban discrimination based on gender identity and expand protections for LGBTQ students? Please explain your position.

When it comes to federal Title IX rules, we are obligated as a school system to adjust our policies to comply with the new rules and I had no problem supporting these changes. The new rules laid out by the Biden administration were about processes, but unfortunately there are hate groups out there ready to attack any and all things related to the LGBTQ community. It’s unfortunate that a couple of board members chose to make significantly more of this even when it had been explained to all of us exactly what these changes applied to and more specifically what they did not apply to. 

4. Do you support North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarships (otherwise known as vouchers for private schools)? Why or why not? How do you think they impact public schools? 

I do not support opportunity scholarships. As a taxpayer, I oppose them in general, but I view it as my responsibility as a public school board member and candidate to oppose them. It’s my job to advocate for public schools and I don’t understand public school board members, including two on our board, attempting to justify the massive amount of taxpayer money being given away to private schools while public schools continue to be underfunded. We know that public schools will lose money as a result of this and this money could’ve gone to teacher salaries and/or feeding every kid breakfast and lunch in the state. Instead it’s a giveaway to people who really didn’t ask for it. 

5. WCPSS administrators just released the first draft of a new school reassignment plan for the 2025-26 school year that will populate four new schools in southern and southwestern Wake County. Do you support the draft plan? What, if anything, needs to change in the plan? 

At the moment I support the plan but as a school board member I always stay open to the possibility of changes as we get feedback from communities. This is one of the tougher parts of the job because you want to provide as much stability as possible to students and families but the amount of growth in some parts of the county makes that a challenge.

6) What is the role of School Resource Officers (SROs) in schools? 

SROs are, unfortunately, a necessary part of providing schools with a safe learning environment for our students and staff. I do believe that our security team along with the board attorneys have done a good job of continually working with our law enforcement partners to improve training, guidance, and expectations for when an SRO is needed and more specifically when they should not be involved. (I appreciate our law enforcement partners working with us to continually make improvements.) Ultimately, we always want and expect principals to be the leaders in their schools with SROs having a limited role as laid out in the Memorandum of Understanding. 

7) The ‘Parents’ Bill of Rights’ law seeks to give parents more control over their children’s education. How should WCPSS balance compliance with the law with students’ rights to privacy and teachers’ ability to provide a sound basic education? 

Similar to Title IX changes, we don’t get to pick and choose what state law we follow. (If we did, I’d immediately vote to modify our calendars.) We implemented the law into our policies and at this point I don’t think it has impacted teachers’ ability to provide a high 

quality education. (That is subject to change as we get data over time.) With this bill, I worry more about the potential opting-in vs opting-out clause when it comes to things like health screenings in school. A health screening or a vision screening has never been controversial to my knowledge but here we are and we know those numbers have dropped significantly around the state. 

8) How should WCPSS deal with efforts to ban books in schools? 

I believe the majority of us on the board are doing exactly as we should do, which is to speak out against book bans, trust our staff to make decisions about which books should be in our libraries and trust our families to have conversations with their kids about

books. This is a repeated theme, but this issue is largely driven by one group that continuously goes after all things LGBTQ+ related. I’ve had lots of conversations with District 6 parents, and I cannot recall one that has been about a parent wanting to have a book removed from a school. 

9) Recently, Durham Public Schools implemented a Universal Free Lunch program that provides nutritious free breakfasts and lunches to all of the system’s students. The Wake County school board, on the other hand, voted to charge more for meals this academic year. Was this the right move? Should WCPSS follow DPS’s lead and find a way to provide free meals to the district’s students? 

I voted for the increase in meals this year so I certainly own that. We were given clear information about potential child nutrition services budget issues we faced if we did not raise the price so there are times when you vote for something you would prefer not to. It would be great if we could provide the free breakfast and lunches for all students, and I’m hopeful a future Harris-Walz administration would make that a spending priority for the nation. Unfortunately we have to operate under the assumption that the current majority in the NCGA would never go down this path, so we are having preliminary discussions on what a multi-year plan to cover more schools would look like. I applaud what DPS did and I’m hopeful we can move in that direction even if it’s not as quickly as we all might like. 

10) Research has shown an achievement gap for Wake County Schools students based on race and socioeconomic status. What specific policies would you support or what actions would you take to help close the gap so that race and socioeconomic status don’t persist as predictive factors? 

As a board member I take these achievement gaps very seriously which is why they are a priority within the strategic plan that I supported and we adopted as a board in 2023. We have clearly laid out that one of the goals of WCPSS is to “eliminate proficiency

disparities by race, ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status.” To work toward achieving these goals, we have a number of aims or “high-leverage steps we will take to achieve our goals” within the strategic plan with four in particular that have an important (academic) equity focus. It is my hope that these steps, along with the equity policy put in place by the prior board and the positive changes coming out of the academic department on a number of fronts, will significantly close achievement gaps. 

For reference, the aims are as follows: 

Aim 4 | Eliminate over-representation in Special Education and under-representation in advanced coursework by race, ethnicity, and gender. 

Aim 10 | Eliminate over-representation by race, ethnicity, gender, and disability in student discipline referrals, suspensions, and absences. 

Aim 13 | Implement an equity framework that provides systemic expectations around equity to differentiate support, guidance, and resources across all schools and departments. 

Aim 14 | Differentiate resource allocation to provide PreK-12 students with equitable access to high-quality teachers and principals, and sufficient support services.