In October present members of the Monroe City Schools will be up for re-election. It doesn’t seem like four years, but time passes quickly.
Since the racial makeup of the present board is five blacks and two whites, there are high expectations in the Black community that its major concerns would be addressed.
With the exception of Darryl Berry, four of the five black city school board members ran on the same community concerns. Berry, basically had no platform, he said he would take of the business and thought superintendent Vidrine deserved a new contract.
Four years later, Board member Betty Cooper says she never made any promises concerning academic improvements in South Monroe.
However, in October Black board members will be asked to account for their stewardship. The concerns of our community have not changed the last four years:
FAILING ACADEMICS IN SOUTHSIDE SCHOOLS: When Southside candidates sought election they pledged to make changes in the system that would improve the failing academics in Southside schools. When they ran for office in 2018 this was the first item on all of their lists: They pledged to work to improve the quality of instruction, methodology and staffing of Southside schools to raise its academic performance. All Southside schools had less than average and too often failing reports in English, Math, Science, and History. Board members will need to show their progress in this area.
PRE-SCHOOL EXPANSION: Black board members pledge to passionately pursue expanding the district’s pre-school program as a measure design to address failing school performance. Generally, the pledged to use the old MLK school building as a pre-school building and use district, state, and federal funds to make pre-school available to more students. As they gear up for election, they will need to defend their actions in this area.
EQUITY IN ASSIGNMENT OF TEACHERS: Black board members pledge to lean on the administration to insure that Southside schools had fully trained and certified teachers. In addition, they promised to address the recurrent theme of using untrained teachers as long-term substitutes. Since this was a promise it will need to be explained.
RENEWAL OF SUPERINTENDENT’S CONTRACT: All Southside board members, except Darryl Berry, pledged not to renew the contract of Dr. Brent Vidrine as superintendent. As re-election approaches explanation of their decisions regarding this issue will be explained.
In the 2018 election, several Southside candidates were heavily financed by Northside finance donors. In at least one instance, a Southside School Board candidate had over 70% of reported campaign contributions donated by Northside contributors. Whether or not those large donations influenced board member actions over the last four years will probably be a campaign issue if any black members have opponents.
All four of the Black candidate’s campaign promises involved improving academics for South Monroe to one degree or another.
Academic improvement will be a school board litmus test, if anyone cares.
