Name: Michael T Williams 

Age: 50

Party: Unaffiliated

Website: www.docwilliamsforwake.com

Occupation: Education Consultant I/ North Carolina Department of Public Safety/ Division of Juvenile Justice

Years in the community: 16

1. In 300 words or less, please give us—and our readers—your elevator pitch: Why are you running? Why should voters entrust you with this position? What are your priorities, and what would you want to see the school board do differently or better over the course of your term?

I am running to represent the constituents of District 4 on the Wake County School Board. My goals for running are to: serve as an advocate for equitable resources for our schools; engage our community in the governance, maintenance, operation, and oversight of our schools, and to serve our constituents in matters of commendation and criticism of the services we are providing to them. Additionally, I am running to lead the effort in honoring our legacy, preserving our history, and inspiring our students by naming our schools after educational icons who reside within our district. I believe that school safety, educational equity, school funding, and student achievement are some of the top priorities which must be tackled by our district and our representative must be positioned, prepared, and precise as they will serve as the voice for the collective citizenry of District 4. I believe that I am that candidate as I am the only person vying for this seat who is a licensed K-12 educator, professional development workshop facilitator, published author, has an earned doctorate in educational leadership, politically unaffiliated, and is self- financing their campaign. In the words of the late Shirley Chisolm, I am unbossed and unbought. If elected, I will be in the best position to fully represent my constituents on the issues which impact them and their concerns.

2. Given the direction of the school district, would you say things are on the right course? If not, for what specific changes will you advocate if elected?

I believe that the board is taking great strides to ensure educational equity and parity for all students. Additionally, the robust local supplement offered to our teachers has positioned our district to recruit, orient, and select the best professionals to instruct our pupils. However, with these positions, we continue to have a significant vacancy rate and varied levels of achievement and resources within our schools based upon the income level of the citizens within the community. We must couple remuneration with respect if we wish to maintain faculty and staff members. We must support them administratively in issues of discipline, performance, and resources to keep them engaged. In terms of equity, it will not be achieved until every school is fully resourced based upon needs and numbers. A tour of the schools within our district will reveal serious inadequacies in this area. If we are concerned about equity, that must be remediated.

3. What are the three main issues that you believe the Wake County Board of Education needs to address in the upcoming year?

The three main issues we should address are educational equity, school safety, and student achievement particularly addressing pandemic loss and how to remedy it.

4. Describe something you think the school board should have prioritized differently in the current budget. Do you think the budget supports students from lower income families as well as from affluent families? Does the budget meet the district’s infrastructure needs?

As our community is still growing, we need to ensure that our facilities are meeting the needs of our current and future students. Growth brings about diversity in the intellectual levels of the students, values of the parents and students, career goals and priorities, etc. The current budget calls for bonds to fund future buildings to accommodate our students, I believe that is a step in the right direction. However, we must work to ensure that the working conditions, adopted policies, and fiscal supports are in place across the district to meet the needs of the current and planned consumers of the instructional services we are offering.

5) What is your understanding of what Critical Race Theory is? Is CRT currently taught in K-12  public schools? What are your thoughts on House Bill 324, the bill Gov. Cooper vetoed because he said it “pushes calculated, conspiracy-laden politics into public education?” Would you support such a bill?

We all have certain parts of our history which is less flattering than other parts of our history.   However, the good and bad worked in concert to get us to our current destination. CRT seeks to cover the less flattering parts of our history. Our children need to l4earn about all of our history to help them appreciate the journey which helped us get to our current destination and keep us from repeating the mistakes and missteps of our past. We are dishonoring our history by minimizing the roles of the less flattering parts of our history. We must teach all of our history to help our students understand our destiny.

6)  Does the General Assembly have a constitutional obligation to comply with the state Supreme Court order in the Leandro case to fully fund public schools and give every child in North Carolina a sound basic education? 

The General Assembly MUST comply with the Leandro case to ensure educational equity as GUARANTEED by our state constitution. We must work with our constituents to compel our legislators to comply with the decision and ensure that all of our schools are fully resourced to meet the educational needs of the students served.

7) Orange County’s Board of Education has passed some of the most progressive policies in the state around strengthening racial equity and providing a safe, inclusive environment for LGBTQ+ students to learn. Should Wake follow Orange’s lead and implement Gender Support guidelines that create a protocol for students who are transitioning or want to?

I wholeheartedly believe that every student should believe that they “belong”, and school is a safe place for them. Policies are a good start in this effort, but it must be coupled with staff training, student engagement and parental participation if it is to be effective. The equity policy currently being considered is a start but without training and buy in from the stakeholders they are just words on a page.

8) How do you think the current school board handled the COVID-19 pandemic? Please explain your answer.

As COVID was unchartered territory, I believe our board did the best it could with the information and resources available to it. In hindsight, maybe more parental input could have been solicited before enacting the mask policy and the remote learning initiative could have possibly been implemented better but with the available information, we did well.

9) Recently, groups of parents with students in WCPSS have mounted efforts to ban certain books from school classrooms and libraries. The school board and school administrators pushed back on these efforts. Did the board and school system handle this controversy appropriately? What more, if anything, should be done to address efforts to ban books in schools? 

Books in the library should have some instructional value within a core content area. If this cannot be justified, the books should be removed. Books which promote values, lifestyles and are inconsistent with the community norms should be removed. School resources should be focused on teaching the four R’s reading, writing, arithmetic, and respect. Resources which do not focus on these areas should be screened and removed if they are inconsistent with community values.      

10) Do police officers (School Resource Officers) have a role in schools? Do you agree with the way the current board is trying to address the role of SROs in Wake County Schools?         

In light of the breaches in school safety within schools across the country, we need trained SRO personnel within our schools to keep everyone safe. However, these officers must have training as relevant to meeting the needs of students who vary in age, intellect, maturity, etc.

11) 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?  

If equity was ever achieved, this gap would diminish as all schools would have the instructional, technological, fiscal, and physical resources to meet the varied needs of its students. Until this happens, we must provide more opportunities to engage parents in the educational process of their children, it has been shown that engaged parents produce engaged students; we must incentivize and encourage the use of technological instructional resources (Cool Math, Kahoot, Kahn Academy, etc.) during non-school hours, we must offer extended day instructional opportunities for low performing students using Title 1, 21st Century, and other resources, and encourage teachers to provide instruction based upon the learning styles of their students.

12) How should WCPSS address its ongoing shortage of educators, support staff, bus drivers, school nurses, mental health professionals, and other key staff?’

We could remedy the staff shortage by bringing “respect” back into our schools. Most of my contemporaries who teach in traditional schools have lamented about the level of respect they feel from administrators, parents, and students. When our current staff believe they are supported by administration when students are referred for disciplinary infractions or parents raise allegations against them we will see staffing levels rise. When our current staff is being compensated in such a manner that they do not have to secure additional employment by delivering food or transporting strangers we will see staffing levels rise. When the community collectively demonstrates respect for the sacrifices staff makes while instructing their students we will see staffing levels rise. Remuneration may increase our staff, but Respect will maintain our staff.

13) Is the district currently doing enough to assist disabled students? What more could it do?        

Prior to COVID, we were having challenges meeting the needs of our disabled students but COVID exacerbated those challenges. We must ensure that we have adequately trained personnel who have the TIME to meet the needs of our students. Unfortunately, many special educators do not have the time needed to meet the needs of their students. Staffing challenges across the district have reduced and eliminated case management periods, which were used to work on IEP goals, contact parents, record progress monitoring data, conduct observations, etc., during the school day forcing them to perform those duties after school when opportunities to collect relevant data and adequately plan for student intervention are limited. We must address the staffing issues to ensure the implementation of IEP goals is done with fidelity. When we recognize that we lack internal resources to meet their needs, we must partner with other organizations and persons to meet their needs.

14) If there is anything else you would like to address, please do so here.

This election is about choices. Does District 4 want a representative who has minimal educational experience, has not been in a classroom, and does not understand the challenges faced by the professionals who serve our students? or Does District 4 want a proven educator, competent administrator and practicing K-12 educator representing them on the school board? If the latter is our desire, I am the only candidate for this seat who is credentialed, competent, and caring enough to commandeer the resources needed to help us overcome those challenges. With the challenges our district is facing, we do need a representative who is ready on day one to advocate for equitable resources for our schools, engage our community in the oversight, governance, and maintenance of our schools and support our students, parents and staff in matters of commendation and criticism. I am the candidate who is ready on Day One to serve.

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