In School Board race, money is key issue

The board has weathered troubled fiscal times recently, and candidates are busily defending or attacking the board's policies and decisions.

By ROBERT KING, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 4, 2002

For the better part of a year, no one knew exactly how much money the school district had.

For the last two years, auditors have said the school district is in financial decline.

For the past four years, the school district's rainy day reserve account has hemorrhaged money. In 1998, it stood at $4-million; last year, it ran a $1.2-million deficit.

This year, School Board members learned from their finance director that $3.3-million in surplus cash had been sitting around unnoticed since 1995.

Through it all, board member Robert Wiggins -- who has drawn three opponents to his bid for re-election this year in School Board District 1 -- has maintained that all is well when it comes to the school district's finances.

"I would go so far as to say there was no financial problem," Wiggins said.

His opponents see things quite differently.

Candidate Jim Polk says Wiggins is in denial. "I don't know whether he's been asleep at the wheel or what's been going on," Polk said.

Candidate Irvin Homer says Wiggins and other board members have been trying to explain away the problems without being honest and forthright. He calls the budget troubles a "fiasco" that has cost the school district credibility in the community.

Candidate Stephen Galaydick, who lost the District 1 seat to Wiggins in 1998, describes the school district's budget in recent years as "on life support -- and it's thundering and lightning outside."

"In their dreams they can say they have no problems," Galaydick said.

Polk, Homer and Galaydick say they would pay much closer attention to the budget than the current board does. And they say they would demand greater accountability from the staffers who manage it.

Despite everything, the discovery of the $3.3-million surplus has washed away many sins.

It allowed the School Board to pay off the last bits of debt from its disastrous self-funded health insurance plan.

It even pumped some cash into its depleted rainy day reserve -- so much that the board finished the year ending June 30 with $1.4-million on hand.

So, as Wiggins' first term comes to an end, he is satisfied things turned out okay -- just as he said they would all along.

"The district is in excellent fiscal health," he wrote in response to a Times survey question.

From the start, the campaign for the District 1 seat has been about how Wiggins and the School Board have been managing school business. At the same time, Homer, Polk and Galaydick have been trying to set themselves apart from the pack.

Homer, a native of Trinidad who emigrated to America in 1950, has talked about his perspective as a "seasoned educator" and a community man. He taught and worked as a school administrator in New York for 30 years. His civic involvement is so extensive, he was named Citizen of the Year by the Greater Hernando County Chamber of Commerce.

Polk, who developed an interest in cowboy poetry while living in Idaho in recent years, tells voters in his rich Southern drawl that he wants greater accountability -- from the School Board, the superintendent and the district staff. And he says better planning will remedy the problem of crowded schools.

Galaydick, who works for the Florida Lottery, is trying to assure people that he has moderated the hard-charging style of his past that is frequently described as abrasive and vicious. He says he will still pursue details but will pursue them nicely.

To win the seat, one of the four candidates will have to muster more than 50 percent of the vote in Tuesday's primary. Failing that, the top two finishers will face off in the Nov. 5 general election.

It has been a low-budget campaign. Combined, the foursome had raised less than $10,000 through mid August. Some County Commission candidates have raised that by themselves.

Robert Wiggins

In his campaign, Wiggins has attempted to focus attention on the positive.

He is proud that school uniforms, or at least a strict dress code, have become mandatory in eight of the county's 17 schools. Although Wiggins didn't initiate the trend, the wholehearted support for uniforms shown by Wiggins and other board members has encouraged them to spread.

He points out that his research of local land values saved the school district at least $130,000 in 1999 during a discussion with a developer about impact fee credits.

Wiggins also has touted other things he says "we" -- meaning the board, the district staff and schools -- have accomplished together.

Among those is an effort to help second-graders who are reading below standard to improve their performance. While other board members were more directly involved in coming up with the idea, Wiggins has supported its budget at every opportunity.

Another is the Advanced Placement Academy at Springstead High School. It was an idea conceived by teachers and staff at Springstead, who brought it to the board when their planning was done. Wiggins was part of a board that voted unanimously to approve.

Wiggins has told voters that the board lowered school property tax rates each of the last four years. That's true: The cuts were forced on the district by the state Legislature. And some board members complain that lowering the rates (and revenue) has hurt schools.

Other cost savings he mentions -- billing Medicaid for services the district once paid for, and refitting voice and data lines -- came from district staff. Wiggins voted for them as they came up on the board agenda.

Wiggins reasons that because he has been pilloried for obstacles the board has encountered together, he should get some credit for things done well. He says the board is working well as a team.

"It's a formula for a School Board that's working together to find solutions, not create problems," Wiggins said.

Wiggins has won support from the political action committee that represents the Hernando Classroom Teachers Association and from the West Central Florida Labor Council, which has indirect ties to the union that represents school support staff.

The teachers' PAC gave him $500. The labor council gave him $100. Those are two of the largest cash donations to his campaign. Wiggins has chipped in $900 of his own money.

Wiggins ran in 1998 on a conservative platform.

He was a wholehearted supporter of Gov. Jeb Bush's education reforms, including private school vouchers. He promised Saturday work details for disruptive students and expulsion for students suspended a third time, a "three strikes and you're out" for schools. He wanted high schools to require more science and math classes. And he pledged to pursue a requirement that students get a 2.5 grade point average before participating in extracurricular activities.

Once elected, Wiggins learned that Saturday work programs already existed. He has yet to propose a "three strikes" policy. And other board members refused to require more science and math courses or to raise the grade requirement for extracurricular activities.

Beyond that, Wiggins said in 1998 that he was running for the board in order to improve the school system before his then-preschool children entered school. His children now attend private school.

Wiggins says now that when he said "school system," that included all schools -- public and private. Still, other candidates say Wiggins misled the public. And they have been hammering Wiggins on the point.

For the past two years, Wiggins has been the swing vote on some key issues.

When the other board members were split on whether to name Wendy Tellone as superintendent, Wiggins proposed a trial run of three to six months for Tellone. The idea was rejected. Faced with the option of giving Tellone a two-year contract or conducting a search for a superintendent, he voted for the contract. Tellone was hired on a 3-2 vote.

He also was on the winning side of 3-2 votes approving Tellone's $90,000 salary and $800-a-month car allowance and Tellone's staff restructuring plan.

In perhaps the costliest decision of his tenure, Wiggins was part of the unanimous board vote in 1999 to create a self-funded health insurance plan for the district. Before they killed it two years later, the plan had rung up $5-million in cost overruns.

Wiggins says it is his lone regret. "If I could go back, if I was a psychic back then, I would not have voted to go with self-insurance," he said.

Irvin Homer

Homer, a Democrat, captured 46 percent of the vote in losing to Wiggins, a Republican, in the 1998 general election. Back then, School Board races still were partisan affairs. Now they are nonpartisan.

Homer says his status as the only Democrat in a race with three Republicans could push him over the top.

"I think it gives me a better shot," Homer said.

So far, Homer has the most broad base of financial support of the four candidates. Whereas the others have largely self-funded campaigns, Homer has drawn nearly 50 outside contributors. The donations have been mostly small ones. All told, he has raised just $2,570.

Though he questions the board's management of the district, Homer says he has few gripes with the district's academic programs. His major classroom adjustment would be to require foreign language instruction in the early grades.

He wants to require parents to "volunteer" time in their child's school.

Homer's most novel proposal is to designate someone as a public relations director to publicize good things going on in the county's schools. He also is adamant about eliminating advertising of products in schools.

Above all, Homer hopes his extensive community involvement shows his commitment to Hernando County. Among other things, he has mentored a ninth-grade student, has served on a commission that oversees school readiness and has been active in the advisory council at Spring Hill Elementary School.

As a package, Homer says his resume of experiences makes him "uniquely qualified" to serve on the School Board.

Jim Polk

Polk was the school district's chief engineer until he resigned in 1999 because of his diminishing responsibilities and a personality conflict with the facilities director.

He spent a year working in Idaho -- a "Western sabbatical," during which he picked up the art of cowboy poetry -- and then returned to Florida. Now he works for Pasco County, overseeing road and bridge projects.

Once back, Polk said, he grew concerned about what he calls "bumbling" by the School Board. So he decided to become a candidate, moving in March into District 1 to make himself eligible.

Through mid August, Polk had put $3,180 of his own money into his campaign. He has no other contributors.

Polk's contention is that heads should have rolled during the recent financial debacles. He also says that board members simply didn't demand enough information.

He has chided the board for failing to plan for growth, pointing to the district's crowding problems at the middle school level as proof.

Other than being supportive of vocational programs, Polk has said little about academics. He acknowledges that, having been away from the county's schools for three years, he has some brushing up to do. But he says that can be done easily enough.

During his stint as chief engineer, Polk helped secure a deal to buy 100 acres for future construction. That property is home to Chocachatti Elementary School and Nature Coast Technical High School, as well as the school district's bus compound.

Polk says the board needs to do much more of that kind of land banking to brace against the costs of escalating property values.

While he has criticized Wiggins and the board for sloppy accounting, Polk has led all local candidates in this year's election in the number of fines and citations by election officials for his failure to meet deadlines for filing campaign finance reports.

Polk says he has shown his ability to be an effective manager of public resources. He considers that a much better gauge of his skills than a few problems with campaign paperwork.

Steve Galaydick

For Galaydick, the loss to Wiggins in the 1998 Republican primary came as a tremendous shock. He had predicted a landslide victory for himself.

Looking back, Galaydick now acknowledges what others have said: His personality probably cost him the election.

"I've learned something in four years," he said recently. "I recognize the fact that I was abrasive."

Other School Board candidates haven't hesitated to remind voters about Galaydick.

Polk says abrasive is a good way to describe Galaydick. He also says Galaydick had a tendency to play to the cameras that televised the board's meetings on the local cable channel.

Wiggins says that Galaydick's use of personal attacks to argue his point stifled creative thinking because staffers were not willing to subject themselves to the punishment. He said the board accomplished little with Galaydick as a member.

Even Alan Minthorn, who is running for the District 5 School Board seat against Sandra Nicholson, has claimed that Galaydick's skillful analysis of the details was lost in the calamity caused by his tendency to destroy rather than edify.

Galaydick makes no apologies for asking tough questions. In fact, he says that is what's wrong with the School Board -- members do not ask enough questions; and if they asked more, they would not have had so many difficulties.

The difference in him now, Galaydick says, is that he has learned to ask questions in ways that are less bone-jarring.

From his first term, Galaydick cites two substantial accomplishments.

First, Galaydick and the board voted to raise the grade-point average that is required to participate in extracurricular activities from 1.5 to 2.0, even before the state acted to do so. Second, Galaydick almost single-handedly pushed the district to raise the price for giving soda companies access to schools. The result was a $1.3-million contract with Coke.

Galaydick has put $1,700 of his own cash into a modest campaign. That amounts for all but $20 of his resources.

Galaydick says his main goal is to put the school district's financial house in order. And the best way to do that, he says, is for the board to conduct a line-by-line review of the budget. Cost savings found there could solve all sorts of problems, he said.

"I liked being on the School Board," Galaydick said. "I felt like I could make a difference."

-- Robert King covers education in Hernando County and can be reached at 754-6127. Send e-mail to rking@sptimes.com.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright