Sarasota School Board District 3: Tom Edwards

Name: Tom Edwards

Age: 62

Family: Married

Bio: I have more than 40 years of proven entrepreneurial business experience. I was the founder and owner of an extremely successful employment service with more than 2,000 daily placements. Also, I have 11 years of small business advocacy at the state legislative level. 

Why are you running for office?/What are three policy priorities you hope to accomplish, if elected?

We cannot lose the public education system as we know it today. In 2018, Academica, Florida’s largest for-profit management company applied to set up a charter school in Sarasota county. This is precisely the type of charter school application I will fight back. For profit private schools are at the expense of our A-rated school district. 

We are in the midst of a pandemic. A safe reopening of the school system is not a political issue; it is a public health issue. We have vulnerable students, vulnerable staff and vulnerable family members. We all want the schools open to full capacity ASAP. We need a safe, secure, supported, inclusive learning environment. 

To have real change we must do two things: a) positively affect the education of our students, and b) replace ineffective, divisive, incumbent officials. Replacing Eric Robinson removes the drama, divisiveness and hidden political agendas from the school board, allowing me to utilize my consensus building skills to heal the relationships with our community, our teachers and the union.

What are your concerns regarding student learning under pandemic conditions, and how will you work to address them?

I believe our remote learning options should have been on the shelf and ready to go as a disaster recovery option. In the event of a hurricane, we could have been up and running in short order providing a seamless education routine to schools and students adversely impacted. My opponent missed this opportunity. The district admirably reacted to the COVID-19 shutdown and provided a remote learning option, and the state relaxed accountable requirements for the remainder of the school year. However, we should have invested in improving those remote curriculums. My opponent missed this opportunity. Now we are being mandated to open at full capacity, five days a week, and provide a remote learning option. We still need to improve those remote learning programs. I would provide oversight that our remote learning options meet the new state requirements and task our administration to utilize best practices from other school districts. 

How will you as a member of the school board measure the success of the district’s new superintendent?

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If elected, what can and will you do to lessen the strife that has existed among board members?

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What is your position on the following?

• Charter Schools. 

I am always open to good community-based ideas that lead to successful schools meeting specific needs. We have many of these charter schools within our district already. They become a true partnership with the community and are managed by and accountable to our administration and school board. I am opposed to private charter schools that are managed by for- profit management companies. They become a detriment to our public education system. 

• The states recently expanded voucher-scholarship program.

The expansion of the voucher system is destructive to our public education system. When public tax dollars ear-marked for our public schools are redeployed to private education companies, it causes public schools to right size to remaining available dollars. This causes teacher layoffs and reductions in services provided by our public schools.

What would you say the Sarasota School board and system can do to help recruit teachers?

The first thing we must do is get turnover under control within the school district’s HR department. This turnover is problematic, preventing a long-term recruitment plan. We do not have a diverse teacher population. This requires a recruitment plan that identifies recruitment sources and relationships established, so that they deliver candidates over time. I would also suggest a new-hires package beyond salary and benefits that might include preferred rental rates, reduced mortgage rates and other Sarasota County incentives for new hires. 

Secondly, teacher turnover is a problem. We have had a broken culture with poor morale well before the sexual harassment scandal. That has only been exasperated by the pandemic and a sorely divided board and union. Dr. Asplen and more team-oriented elected board members will go a long way to fixing this problem. 

Lastly, I would recommend an onboarding program where new teacher hires are partnered with teacher ambassadors that help to ensure a less stressful getting acclimated time period.