11 candidates vying for 2 spots on State Board of Education

Eleven candidates are competing for two seats on the State Board of Education for the Nov. 8 general election.

Here's a look at the candidates who are seeking the seats, which carry an eight-year term. Our description of the candidates are pulled from information submitted to MLive's Voter guide.

The State Board, which has eight members, "serves as the general planning and coordinating body for all public education and advises the legislature as to the financial requirements for public education," according to the Michigan constitution. The board also appoints the State Superintendent.


• Ish Ahmed

Ahmed

Ahmed, a 69-year-old Novi resident who serves as a senior advisor to the chancellor of University of Michigan-Dearborn, is running as a Democrat.

Ahmed, who formerly worked as director of the Michigan Department of Human Services, said he wants to serve on the State Board because education is one of the most important issues facing the state.

"Strengthening Pubic education and providing accessible and affordable higher education are the most important work we can be engaged in," Ahmed wrote in MLive's voter guide. "It is also a primary way to assure an inclusive and engaged society."

He said his top priorities include "putting the public back into public education," which he described as ensuring that "parents, communities and their local elected officials are the key decision makers in the education of their children."

Ahmed also said he wants universal access to early education and parenting programs, and to ensure that all children have equal access to a quality education. "Parents should not have to go hunting for a school that can assure a decent education for their children or worse yet be locked into a zip code that provides an inferior education," he said.

• John Austin

Austin

Austin, a 54-year-old Ann Arbor resident, is the current president of the State Board of Education and is running for re-election as a Democrat. He was first elected to the board in 2000 and reelected in 2008.

Austin, who works as director of the Michigan Economic Center, said he's running for the State Board so that he can "continue to lead today's charge to recommit and rebuild our great public education system."

He said he wants to put "Michigan back among the top 10 states in terms of education quality," bring "justice, democracy and quality education back to Detroit and all Michigan communities," and make attaining "higher education the new standard for all of Michigan's citizens."

Austin said his top priorities include reforming Michigan's school funding model and closing achievement and performance gaps by race and socioeconomic status. He also said wants to remake "Michigan's charter, virtual learning and school choice policy to ensure quality control over educational offerings and provide an effective learning environment for our children."

"Together, we can rebuild Michigan's economy around ambitious education standards, inclusivity, and real investments in our children," he said.

• Scotty Boman

Boman

Boman, a 54-year-old Detroit resident who works as a physics professor at Henry Ford College, is running as a Libertarian.

Boman, who once served as chair of the libertarian party of Michigan, says he's running for State Board because he wants to move the "public discourse to a new paradigm that places Individual choice and diversity above central planning and standardization in education."

He said his top priorities include issuing guidelines that encourage schools to be "laboratories of innovation" and permit people "legally qualified to carry firearms elsewhere to carry them in schools."

He also wants the State Board to work with the state Legislature to "implement reforms such as returning the amount of money parents would spend on public schools to parents who wish to enroll their children in private schools" or homeschool their children.

Michigan should "abandon Federally subsidized PC fads like Common Core, man-made global warming alarmism, Gun-Free Zones, and the Orwellian newspeak whereby common teasing is called "bullying," he said.

"A variety of different schools need to be available so that families can pick the ones that best accommodate the students needs," he said."Ultimately, this requires returning control of education dollars to families and students. Put another way, the biggest problem with public education is its defining characteristic; it is largely paid for with theft."

• Derek Grigsby

Grigsby

Grigsby, a 59-year-old resident of Alanson, a community in Emmet County, is running as the Green Party candidate.

Grigsby, who listed his occupation as semi-retired and did not include past employment information on the MLive voter guide, said he's running for the State Board because he believes Michigan's "education system as it is now is uncaring and oppressive for our children."

"Instead of treating education as enlightenment of the mind and spirit as I think it should be, we are treating our kids and their education like commodities to be bought and sold," he said.

He said his top priorities for office would be to "stop privatization of education in all its different forms including charters" and to "educate kids according to their level of understanding not force a curriculum on kids that doesn't benefit them mentally and physically."

He also wants to "work to make education a right and free to all who want it, from the cradle to the grave."

"Education should be a right for anyone that seeks it regardless of their ability to pay for it or not," he said. "I want to bring this kind of attitude to the process."

• Bill Hall

Hall, a 60-year-old Rockford resident who works as a real estate attorney, is running as a Libertarian. Hall said he's running for the State Board because of his "deep commitment to youth education" as illustrated by the more than two decades he's spent as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout leader.

Hall said his top priority is to support "freedom of choice in education." Competition from "charter and private schools and home schooling pushes traditional public schools to innovate and better educate, and saves taxpayer dollars," he said.

He also said he supports fiscal responsibility, giving schools more freedom to choose their own social policies.

He said he wants to solve "the unfunded school pension crisis by replacing defined benefit with defined contribution plans," and that he doesn't believe a "national common core curriculum" should be mandated."

The most pressing issue facing the State Board is "dismal education results," Hall said.

"We need to apply consistent M-STEP testing standards to measure progress and identify and address failing schools and teachers," he said. "Further tinkering with the testing process will only delay the gathering of fair measurements of educational progress, and taking the necessary actions - closing failing schools, promoting the best teachers and educational methods while providing training to those teachers who need it."

• Mary Anne Hering

Hering

Hering, a 67-year-old Dearborn resident who works as an adjunct instructor at Henry Ford College, is running as a member of the Working Class Party.
She said she's running because residents have "stood by too long and watched public education be destroyed in many working class communities, and school budgets cut in middle class communities as well."

She said her top priorities for office include telling "the truth about why public education is being eroded" and "who caused the real economic and social crisis in the public school systems" and "why there is plenty of money for the schools, and what it will take to get it."

She also said she wants to ensure that children have a quality education and "to organize parents, teachers, support staff - all those groups of people affected by the budget cuts to the public schools. She said she would "try to link people from communities throughout the state who are ready to make a fight to keep their jobs, to make decent wages and benefits, because they work with children, our most valuable resource."

Hering said she believes there's already enough dollars to adequately fund public education but that "political decisions are made, over and over again, by both mainstream parties, to use that wealth for other purposes, like subsidizing billionaire's real estate and sports ventures, or giving tax breaks to multi-billion dollar corporations."

• Douglas F. Levesque

Levesque

Levesque, a 46-year-old Owosso resident who founded the Bible Nation Society, is running as a candidate of the U.S. Taxpayers Party.

He said he's running for a seat on the State Board because he wants to "revive the concepts of parental rights, educational liberty, fiscal clarity, moral values, and child protection."

"I want to revive the concepts of parental rights, educational liberty, fiscal clarity, moral values, and child protection," he said. "Public schools can be dangerous places, not just because of campus violence, but because of classroom dogma."

Levesque said his priorities for office are to stimulate the "best academic product possible for students, their future, and Michigan's success."

He also wants to "ensure local oversight and parental rights over educational choices" and create "the best environment that ensures child protection and moral values."

"There is not one homogeneous definition for a quality education," he said. "Each community may decide differently what that is. Parents must decide what that is. When the state tries to arbitrate fairness between one district and the next someone usually ends up with lopsided funding. Equal funding should be the basis for this liberty."

• Tom McMillin

McMillin

Tom McMillin, a 51-year-old Rochester Hills resident who formerly served as a State Representative in the Michigan Legislature, is running as a Republican.

McMillin, a certified public accountant, said he's running for a seat on the State Board because he wants to "push education authority out of Washington and Lansing and down to the local level - to local teachers and parents, who know what is best for a child's education."

He said he wants to bring "common sense" to the State Board, and that he's tired "of the State Board regularly attacking parental authority and parental choice. I will defend parental authority and parental choice in education."

His top priorities would be to "repeal Common Core and return as much authority over education to the local level - to parents and teachers."

McMillin also said he wants "to fight to stop sending our tax money to bail out school districts that mismanage the money they are given, like in Detroit." He would also seek to repeal voluntary guidelines on the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students adopted by the State Board. McMillin says those guidelines "allows boys into girls' bathrooms and locker rooms."

"Further, we need to fight federal and state driven high-stakes testing aligned to Common Core - which just equates to more "teaching to the test" instead of allowing teachers to design instruction to best meet the needs of the students in their classrooms."

• Nikki Snyder

Snyder

Snyder, a 32-year-old nurse from Whitmore Lake, is running as a Republican. She said she's running for a seat on the State Board because she's a "passionate advocate for kids with disabilities."

She said her top priorities for office are "protecting parental rights by empowering parents as their child's first educator and primary source of love, support and leadership."

She also said she wants to hold "local and state elected officials accountable to the dollars our taxpayers are trusting them with to educate our children." In addition, she said she wants to advocate "for kids with disabilities by speaking up about tracking our special education dollars and the need to improve the delivery of education to those with special needs."

"By focusing on parents, local control and those with special needs, we can shift the conversation in the ways needed to improve education in Michigan," she said.

• Sherry Wells

Wells

Wells, a 70-year-old Ferndale resident who works as an attorney and author, is running as a member of the Green Party.

She said she's running for office because she wants to "educate the public across Michigan--as both a candidate and as a member of the State Board of Education--about what our state government has done since the late 1990s through three Governors--Republicans and a Democrat--and will continue to do to our children's schools unless we, the people, take them back."

She said she wants to "develop community involvement not corporate ownership in schools," and "support wrap-around services not 'high-stakes testing.'"

In addition, she said "all schools should be 'choice' and be in and the community center of the neighborhoods of the children they are to serve, as they once were."

"School reform can require accountability and transparency of for-profit charter schools, if they continue to be permitted, and Redesign can promote best practices and the innovation that the charter schools claimed they were formed to do," she said. "There is no reason why such innovation could not be done in the schools that existed and should be returned to the communities."

• Karen Sue Adams

Adams, who is running for the State Board as a candidate for the U.S. Taxpayers Party, did not respond to a questionnaire for MLive's voter guide.

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