School Board candidates spike up hot debate

[School board members debate]
[Image courtesy of Google images]

Mac Kilduff, Staff Writer

As schools rely more on trailers to run classes, school board candidates were hot on the issues, debating at the Lenoir Retirement Community Center to senior citizens on Tuesday.

The senior citizens were more focused on changes in year-round schooling so a previous $35 million bond issue was not the topic of talk.

One of the top issues was the increase in the use of trailers as classrooms which is seen as a poor decision based on crowding. Candidate Henry Lane believes year-round schooling would reduce the use of trailers by dropping the students in daily attendance by 25%.

Lane’s plan would avoid eliminate the need for constructing new buildings but his opponent, incumbent Board President Elton Fay, said “the cost of educating our children would go up substantially.”

“This community does not want schools on totally different schedules,” Fay added because the students would end up being on completely different schedules.

Candidate Larry Dorman said he wants to work on eliminating overcrowding and increasing teacher pay, but money is always an issue, he said.

The debate also sparked issues about the difference of public and private schools due to the increasing population and larger class sizes.

“Private schools can pick up who they want; public schools cannot pick who they want,” said incumbent Kerry Corino.

A final issue that arose based on the questions of a senior citizen was the right of the teachers to unionize.

Corino said, “The teachers are anti-union. That tells you a lot of things about how this city operates.”