Jennifer Faliero has gone from school volunteer to the School Board. She's just as skeptical, but now she has more information and a seat at the table.
By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published July 25, 2003
VALRICO - They come up to her in the grocery store and at her daughters' soccer games.
More persistent parents have been known to steer their cars alongside Jennifer Faliero as she takes evening walks in the Buckhorn subdivision with her family.
After nearly nine months as the School Board member for District 4, Faliero is settling into her very public job.
"People always want to talk to you," said Faliero. "It never turns off."
As she prepares for her first full school year as the elected representative for southeastern Hillsborough, she finds that for everything she learns about the job and the district's needs, there is always more to figure out.
"In the first few months, I tried very hard to know everything," said Faliero, who was elected in November after 10 years as a stay-at-home mom and vocal school volunteer.
"But I found out you can't be a specialist. You are a generalist - you have to know enough of everything to ask the right questions and make the right choices."
It's a welcome role for Faliero, who as a teenager dreamed of a career in hustle-bustle Washington, D.C.
Faliero said she's got plenty of hustle and bustle in her packed schedule of school visits, district meetings and mornings spent poring through e-mails, district documents and phone messages.
Just ask her husband, Kenny: "Oh, yes. She works all the time."
Homework for mom
She wakes before 7 a.m. to get daughters Lexie and Christy ready for school. By 7:30 she is working from the home office she shares with her husband.
For three hours or so, Faliero answers e-mails, makes phone calls and reads through the endless stream of documents that come out of school district headquarters.
Before joining the board, Faliero's morning hours were spent at Buckhorn Elementary, where she volunteered every day - in her daughters' classrooms, in the front office, even in the cafeteria where she'd open milk cartons and lunch boxes for wary new kindergarteners.
"I saw that the system is so big, even my children could fall through the cracks," she said. "I just thought, "Oh my goodness, there's so much that needs to be done.' That's when I decided my time needed to be taken one step further, so that children whose parents weren't able to be there all the time had a representative."
It was a significant transition for Faliero, who majored in public relations and admits education wasn't really a passion until her daughters entered the public system.
Her campaign criticized the incumbent board as unapproachable and questioned the district's policies for setting school boundaries and dealing with crowded classrooms.
That criticism is tempered now, a shift she credits with experience on the dais and exposure to the district's inner workings.
"I'm just as skeptical of how the district spends money, but now that I have access to all the information - something I didn't have as a parent - I feel much more comfortable."
Faliero takes an academic, research-heavy approach to her School Board position.
She meets monthly with district officials to go over budget issues, and she keeps a journal to track progress on various issues facing her constituents and the district.
The to-do list now includes passing the 2003-04 budget and monitoring school construction and the school choice program, which starting next year will allow students to choose from among specialized programs offered by schools in the surrounding area.
She also has a few of her own priorities for the year ahead.
Among them: Take advantage of Hillsborough's status as a charter district, a designation that allows the district to replace some state laws with tailor-made policies for spending and curriculum.
The oldest child
Faliero spent her early childhood in Birmingham, Ala., the oldest of four children born to Benny and June Poole.
The Poole home was the neighborhood gathering spot.
Jennifer was a top student, winning spelling bees and fulfilling her father's expectations for his oldest child.
"He expected me to be very self-sufficient, strong."
Her strength was tested at age 12, when a new job brought the Poole family to Dade City in Pasco County.
"I had to share a room with my brother and two sisters," Faliero recalled, shaking her head at the memory.
She moved to Tampa in 1981 to attend the University of South Florida.
Her sophomore year, she was working at a bank to support herself, when her future husband strolled in - a New York Yankees shirt showing off his athletic frame.
Today, the Falieros devote their spare time to each other and the girls. Kenny is self-employed, and does work for the Defense Department through an aerospace consulting and engineering firm. But his joy is in coaching for his daughters' soccer club. And seeing his wife grow into her own important career.
"It's nice to be "Jennifer's husband' for a change, instead of her being "Kenny's wife,"' he said. "Now I get to be Mr. Jennifer."
