Name as it Appears on the Ballot: Matt Sears
Full legal name, if different: Matthew Mitchell Sears
Date of Birth: March 5, 1979
Campaign Web Site: www.votemattsears.com
Occupation & Employer: Director, School Services at North Carolina New Schools
Work phone: 919-277-3782 Cell Phone: 919-389-1867
Email: matt@votemattsears.com
1. If elected, what are your top priorities?
1. Investment in Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). I have not been able to quantify DPS'slevel of engagement in SEL, but I have been researching and attending conference sessions onSEL for the past year and believe it to be a investment the district can make to help studentsbetter engage and participate in school. SEL teaches students selfmanagement,socialawareness, and responsible decision making skills, among others. I would look to create aworking group to investigate the value SEL could bring to DPS. A group of students, PTAmembers, teacher leaders, administrators, and Board members could validate the practices,analyze costs and make recommendations on its implementation. I would want to ensure thatinvestment in this kind of program (or any program for that matter) has buy in at ALL levelsbefore looking to allocate resources. Too many programs are billed as “quick fixes” and fizzleout after a year or two. I would want SEL to be implemented for a defined period of time, withmeasures and checkpoints, and have outside evaluation of its implementation. I believe thatinvesting in SEL would help us address some of the needs of atriskstudents as well as helpmitigate against suspensions. Please see the following resources for more information on SEL:http://www.casel.org/ and http://www.edutopia.org/socialemotionallearning
2. Deepen the community's engagement in our schools and the work of the Board. Havingattended many Board committee meetings in my preparations for running, and havinginterviewed all but one of the current Board members, I feel that large blocks of the communityare disengaged in the work of the schools and the Board. It feels like a lot of attention is paid tothe schools when testing results and graduation rates are published annually, but the supportingwork largely happens beneath the radar of the general public. The Board seems to be on atrajectory of increased respect in the community and I want to see that strengthened andcommunity engagement deepened. This community has so much intellectual capital embeddedin it and getting more of that power focused on the schools would help the Board and schoolsmake more informed decisions that affect students and families.
3. Teachers are the most important factor in student learning. A great teacher can teach astudent a year and a half worth of material in just a year. A poor teacher can set a child back afull year, meaning it will take two subsequent year of great teachers to catch that child up. Iwant to further develop the sense that Durham is a great place for great teachers to teach. Theteaching profession is suffering from stagnant wages and reduced support and I think we dosome things at the local level through policies and funding. I will also work with the Board tocontinue to push back against legislation that hurts teachers and education. But I want us to gofurther: I want all teachers to get the feedback and support they need to develop their practice;I want teachers to have development plans that include training that benefits their work and theirstudents; I want teachers to feel the importance of collegiality; and I want the community to holdup its teachers as partners in developing our youth. When we invest in our teachers in this way,they will return that investment to our children. Teachers are doing great work now, but we areasking too much of them and giving them too little, and we are seeing the results as teachersleave the profession. Be it in the Triangle, NC, or nationally, I want Durham to be known as agreat place for great teachers.
2. What is there in your public record or other experience that demonstrates your ability tobe an effective leader? Please be specific about your public and community servicebackground.
Throughout my career and community service experiences, I have focused on working hard forstudents and families in our community. During my teaching career at Hillside and Hillside NewTech, I became a leading mathematics teacher both through traditional instruction and throughProject Based Learning (PBL). At New Tech, I was one of two teachers in the national NewTech Network to show that PBL could effectively be done in mathematics which led to mypresenting at several conferences and the founding of the NC PBL Conference in 2009. Afterparticipating in the Kenan Fellows Program for Curriculum and Leadership Development in2006-08as a teacher, I co-ledadditional Fellowship opportunities and now serve on the Boardof Advisors for the program, which is run through the Kenan Institute at NC State University.In my current role as a Director for School Services at NC New Schools, a nonprofit thatserves public high schools across NC, I have spent three years leading statewide educationefforts, including innovations at the City of Medicine Academy, Southern High School, NealMiddle School and Lucas Middle School in Durham. At New Schools, I lead teams at twentyschools around NC by communicating with teacher and principal coaches onsiteat schools,analyzing school data with schools so that they may design meaningful Action Plans, andcoordinating general and specialized professional development opportunities. I also lead ourorganization's work on learning technologies by developing blended (face-to-faceand online)professional development, capturing quality teaching and learning on video for dissemination,and engaging teachers and principals through social media and online communities.
I am a graduate of the Durham City/County's Neighborhood College program and am currentlyworking at organizing teacher support networks with other parents at our children's daycare.
3. How do you define yourself politically and how does your political philosophy show itself inyour past achievements and present campaign platform?
I feel strongly that educating its children is one of the best investments a community can make. Ialso believe that a community needs to voice its concerns, demand oversight, and be consultedon important decisions that have meaningful impacts on its citizens—in this case the children andfamilies of Durham.
I have dedicated my professional and personal time to investing in the education of our youngpeople. I owned that investment as a teacher, working summers to better my professionalpractice, help DPS better assess student achievement, and sharing my work with peers locallyand nationally. I participated in numerous fellowships, including a Fulbright experience teachingin rural India for a semester in 2008. I coached golf at Hillside for five years and spent timeoutside of school challenging young people to invent, understand career opportunities, and sharetheir work with their peers and the public. With the help and support of my colleagues in all ofthis work, I was honored to be Durham Public Schools' Teacher of the Year in 2009 and wasgiven the Excellence in Teaching Alumni Award from the School of Education at UNC ChapelHill.
I have also spent my career advocating for students and their families. As a teacher and citizen Ifrequently emailed the Board of Education and challenged school administrators on: schoolfunding, equity in Exceptional Children's services, redistricting, teacher compensation, andcollege readiness.
I want to see the Board of Education increase community engagement with DPS, its school andits staff. I would like to see the community agree to take on meaningful, lasting supportprograms such as Social and Emotional Learning rather than programs that whilewell-intentioned,fizzle out after a year or two (I saw multiple examples of this as a teacher). Iwill reach out to our community as Board member. I will ask tough questions about how wespend our dollars. I will work hard to ensure the public is interested and can clearly see howwe are working to improve student achievement for all students in DPS.
4. Identify a principled stand you might be willing to take if elected that you suspect might cost yousome popularity points with voters.
To provide an education that meets the constitutional requirements by the state (sound, basiceducation) and the mission of DPS for all students may require that funding our schools andsupport programs be unequal. Not all children enter our schools at equal starting positions norreceive the same external supports once in school. Examples include: preparedness forkindergarten, letter and phonics skills to start reading, having social and emotional managementskills, having access to supplemental materials at home. To get Durham's education system tobe more equitable, we may have to invest more heavily in support programs at specific schools,or grade levels, or targeted at students with special needs. If DPS can get to a place whereevery student has an equal chance to be successful in their education, the spending required tomake it happen may have to be unequal. Equality in school spending is a goal that resonateswith me as a voter and taxpayer. But, the return on investment as a result of targeted spendingwill be worth it: increased intellectual capital of our students, successful transitions to citizenship,and reinvestment of our students in the community as adults.
5. The INDY's mission is to help build a just community in the Triangle. How would yourelection to office help further that goal?
Please note my response to Question 4 as part 1 of this answer.
Furthermore, I will work to ensure that the district becomes more purposeful in personalizingeducation for each student. We have so many great examples of community support programs,supplemental programs and services, and principals and teachers that are catching kids beforethey lose interest in school, find alternative support groups (gangs in some cases), or simply fallthrough the cracks and are left to navigate school and life by themselves. I will work to hire asuperintendent that has experience in helping schools ensure that each student is reached, bysomeone, by some program and that those people and programs are meeting the learning andsocial/emotional needs of that child. I will push this idea into my work as Board member andconsistently raise it with DPS staff and as a parent of DPS-boundchildren (my oldest daughterwill enter DPS kindergarten in 2015).
6. Minority children and children with disabilities are suspended from DPS at higher ratesthan their white counterparts. To what do you attribute this disparity? How should thisdisparity be resolved?
I was recently at the South by Southwest Education Conference in Austin, TX (SXSWedu) andattended a session moderated by Timothy Shriver on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Ihave spent the last year investigating SEL and I came away from that session with statistics andexamples of ways in which focusing on purely academic teaching does not prepare student tonavigate our education systems effectively. The Indy Weekly's recent article (March 2014)articulated two of the issues surrounding suspensions/success in the same way as Mr. Shriverand his panelists.
First, all students do not innately come to school knowing how to manage their social andemotional needs and frustrations. I'm not sure I did when I entered elementary school. Butthose skills can be overtly and covertly taught to students and the work being done by theCollaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) is proving that teachingstudents those skills is effective in increasing student performance and reducing risky behaviors(CASEL sites these as drug use, violence, bullying and dropping out). (http://www.casel.org/).
Second, the panel discussed in depth the need for adults to be trained to teach SEL skills tostudents. Doing so will further students' abilities to self manage, but will also further educateadults on child and adolescent psychology. The panel admitted that bullying by peers andoccasional abuses of power by adults will always be present in schools (though we can work tominimize them), but through SEL programs we can help students learn how to handle thosesituations in the moment, move past them, and find ways to preserve their dignity and voice.During my teaching in DPS, I did feel qualified and confident to teach and manage children, butI would have appreciated the chance to be trained to better recognize, meet and respectstudents' needs.
As a Board member, I will seek to assess our district's use of, knowledge of, and plans forgrowing SEL. I will work build community support for SEL with families, teachers, and schooladministration.
7. The Durham Board of Education recently joined a lawsuit with dozens of other publicschool districts challenge the law that ends teacher tenure. Tell the voters about your viewson this law and the board's legal challenge to it.
As a community want 100% of great teachers to receive support to develop as professionalsand be rewarded via community appreciation, financially, and with the contracts they werepromised when entering the profession. To single out a small percentage of teachers to earnfour-yearcontracts is divisive and as a former teacher and current education professional, Ihave seen the differences between faculties that work in isolation and faculties that cometogether for the common good. We want our teachers working together in schools and this lawwill lead to competition, not deeper collaboration. I applaud the Board for taking legal,democratic steps to challenge the laws validity and fight for the benefits teachers were promisedwhen they entered the profession.
That said, during the legal challenge, I want our Board to work to find ways to nullify the lawseffects (again, legally). The Board controls local salary supplements, local budgets, and Iencourage the current Board, and will work on the next Board, to find ways to distinguishDurham as a great place for great teachers.
8. The General Assembly passed sweeping legislation on education budgets, teacher pay,vouchers and charter schools in the last session. Assess the impact of that legislation, eitheras a whole or individual laws. Which laws do you agree/disagree with? Why?
Stagnant wages and reduced support are forcing great educators to leave our classrooms andpreventing talented people from entering the profession. I will work to enact local policies andallocate local funding that will support, respect, and protect DPS teachers. See Question 7.
The responsibility of a member of the Board of Education is to create the best educationalenvironment possible for the 33,000+ students that come through our schools' doors every day.While charters are a valuable part of our community, I will focus my work as a Board memberon DPS's students, day in and day out.
That said, I do not want to see charters grow further in North Carolina in areas that arebecoming saturated with charter schools (like Durham), and I oppose for-profitCharterManagement Organizations (CMO's). Charter schools are designed to be places of innovationand experimentation in education and they serve that role in their current capacity. Charterschools were not designed to be competitive alternatives to Local Education Agencies.
I oppose school vouchers and support the North Carolina Association of Educators and theNorth Carolina School Boards Association lawsuits to block the implementation of the schoolvouchers legislation.
9. Several candidates in this year's school board election have strong ties to charter schools.For candidates with those ties: Why are you seeking election to a public school board?What are the pros and cons of vouchers? How would you respond to perceptions thatcharter school employees could have an agenda in pursuing election to the public schoolboard? And if you were to share the board with members who are unaffiliated withcharters, how would you address your policy differences?
For those candidates unaffiliated with charter schools: Should the state provide vouchers to parents who choose private (K-12) schools for their children? If so, for what amount? What are the pros and cons of vouchers? What is the impact of the voucher program on public schools? And if you were to share the board with members who are affiliated with charters, how would you address your policy differences?
I oppose school vouchers and support the North Carolina Association of Educators and theNorth Carolina School Boards Association lawsuits to block the implementation of the schoolvouchers legislation.
The responsibility of a member of the Board of Education is to create the best educationalenvironment possible for the 33,000+ students that come through our schools' doors every day.Collaboration with champions of charter schools will always be a part of the communityconversation and I would look forward to learning from and with my colleagues, be themaffiliated with charter schools or not. In my current professional role and in mypersonal/community work, I frequently engage in learning from and with charter school boardmembers, principals, teachers and students.
10. Durham's school system is facing perhaps one of the most challenging budget years inrecent history. What direction will you give to school administration to balance thebudget? In what areas would you recommend cutbacks and which services should remainuntouched?
In the December joint meeting between the Board of Education and the County Commissioners,which I attended, there was conversation regarding the DPS financial audit that found severalmillion dollars available that had been thought to be inaccessible as they were allocated for otherpurposes. In that meeting, one of the Commissions put forth the idea/exercise of publiclybuilding the budget from the ground up in an effort to make the budget more transparent andeasier to understand. As a new Board member, I would welcome the opportunity to participatein such an exercise with the community. While the Board votes on approving budgets, it is ourcommunity including parents, students, educators, and all taxpayers that should and do provideinput as to the value of various programs. It is up to the Board, DPS staff and community todetermine the effectiveness of programs. Given that the public conversation happens and allconcerned parties are heard, I will fall back on my campaign platform to guide my votes: Arewe allocating funding to make sure all students have an equitable chance at a great education(even if that means unequal funding)? and, Are we making every effort to ensure that eachclassroom has a great teacher working with those students?
11. The previous superintendent, Eric Becoats, resigned amid allegations of financialirregularities in his office. What oversight was lacking that led to Becoats' financialquestions? How should this oversight policy be rectified? What is the board seeking in anew superintendent? Are there aspects of the search process that could be improved?
I would like to see DPS spend time and effort to vet the search firms for their previoussuccesses in bringing talented people to their clients (districts). If this vetting yields a firm thatthe Board feels can deliver strong candidates, then DPS should not simply select the lowestbidder, but invest in the firm that will give us the best chance for bringing a longterm,successfulsuperintendent to Durham. I believe this has happened with the selection of Ray andAssociates. I want the Board to engage the community to create a list of qualities of asuccessful superintendent and prioritize those qualities. Once those qualities and priorities aredecided, I feel that a closed application, interview, and selection process gives our communitythe best chance to attract a talented superintendent.
Among the qualities I hope the community will identify in partnership with the Board are:
● Integrity
● The ability to recognize and develop talented principals and central office staff
● The ability to effectively supervise/evaluate principals and central office staff
● The willingness and ability to engage with community partners that results in tangiblequality outcomes for students
● The ability to focus on student achievement and student need by both addressingimmediate needs and long term planning
● Is respected by teachers and the community in their current district
It is the Board's responsibility to ask district leadership the right questions to ensure that a) rulesare followed appropriately, b) the public trusts the school system, and c) students' and families'interests are at the forefront of decision making. I will maintain this focus on the Board and usemy experience as a teacher and as an educational professional that knows and understands theDepartment of Public Instruction and educational legislation to ask tough question of ourdistrict's leaders.
