superintendent

I attend the New Grace Church on Fleming Island.  I was brought up Catholic, attended Catholic schools, and started attending Episcopal churches as an adult.  We have been attending Anglican churches for the last 8 years, and our family has been very blessed to grow in Christ's love.

Today, our Rev Jon Schuler spoke of politics, something he has never done here before.  He has been very careful never to appear to endorse any candidate, including the two that attend that church.  I truly admire him for that, as I have absolutely no idea what individuals or parties he endorses. 

I attended the school board meeting this evening during TS Fay ( I guess they did not get the message from themselves that all school activities were cancelled in Clay County), and as expected, attendence was even lower than usual.  You sure can get a lot accomplished quickly when you do not have those pesky citizens interrupting your meetings with their 3 minute time limit injections of common sense.  Surprisingly, the most discussed items were the future plans for redistricting high schools and changing over sixth grades from elementary schools to middle schools.  Of course, not too many controversial items will ever be discussed BEFORE an election, unless you can conveniently schedule them during a storm when no one will be there to witness the insanity.

Good evening, folks.  As I wrap up my campaign finances for the Superintendent primary, I was struck by an irony that would be quite funny if it did not involve our children's safety.  I could have entitled it, "A Funny Thing Happened to me on the way to the Election," but since it is not funny and it involved the second most spoken mantra by the Clay County School district, "Safety is our Number One Priority" (right behind "Clay County has Good Schools,"), I will stick with the mantra.

As you know with TS Fay approaching Tuesday morning, Duval County Schools announced at daybreak that after-school activities were cancelled, and that they would soon announce if school would be cancelled.  That decision was made before school ended, to include both Wednesday and Thursday.  In the meantime, the silence from Clay County School District was both deafening and defining, as they refused to communicate any information to the parents. Tuesday Evening, after only the second day of school, the district had also scheduled Open House at the high schools.  Parents flooded the phonelines, wanting information, so much so that we finally received an automated (and sounding particularly perturbed) call from a principal that stated the the open house was still on and school was still on and their number one priority is our children's safety.

Hi folks,

Tomorrow starts early voting.  The Republican nominees for Clay's Superintendent of Schools had the headline article in Sunday's T-U Metro section today and will be interviewed tomorrow at the downtown office for a video to be put on their website soon.  Understandably, the Sheriff's race has received the lion's share of the attention.  If, however, anyone has any questions about my stand on the school issues and would like to talk about my programs to raise the bar, I would be glad to answer them, and I am sure my opponent Mr. Wortham would do the same if you would contact him.  I can answer questions directly on this blog or you can go to my website: Thurman4Super.com, see and read the progams for yourself and email me if you would rather have them answered privately.

I sure hope the voters in Clay County are paying attention to the chaos and controversy that is currently going on in Duval County between the school board and the public, and the appointed school superintendent. It has pretty much been the pattern for at least the last three Duval superintendents. They are appointed by the school board, almost immediately get a multi year contract extension, that has extremely generous provisions if they leave or are terminated before the contract extensions expire. They then start going their own way, pretty much ignoring and showing their contempt for the wishes of the people as well as the school board.