JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The August primary election in Duval County has four school board seats on the ballot. District 5 is an open seat because current board member Warren Jones has reached his term limit.
Reginald Blount, Dr. Nahshon Nicks, and Hank Rogers are the three candidates hoping to join the school board.
Reginald Blount served 30 years in the military. He also helped develop adult continuing education programs at Florida State College. He’s a lifelong Jacksonville resident, and multiple generations in his family have attended Duval County schools.
Blount said if he’s elected, he wants to focus on the budget.
“I really want to do a strategic, just a sanitized budget from the state level, not to get people in trouble,” Blount said. “But to find out where is this money going? How are we spending it? Can we do better on it?”
He also wants to look at improving the curriculum.
“We need to get back to the basics of education, reading, writing, science, arithmetic, math, technology and anything else is part of the parents’ issue, not the school,” Blount said. “And once we get back to that, the basic education, I think we’ll start doing better.”
Another part of his platform is retaining and recruiting teachers.
“We can’t do anything about teachers’ pay; that’s a legislative process, but as far as the incentive pay, we can do a lot about that, especially the money that’s approved by the state. We can certainly enhance the program to retain tenured teachers or older teachers and recruit better teachers from outside all over,” Blount said.
Watch the full interview with Reginald Blount below:
Dr. Nahshon Nicks is a business owner and a Duval County parent. He’s also taught martial arts in more than 20 Duval County schools for a decade.
He said if elected he wants children to feel safe in school, and he plans to fight to keep neighborhood schools open.
“When you look at PECO dollars, we have not been able to achieve the state’s funding pertaining to PECO dollars in almost a decade,” Nicks said. “For what reason, I don’t know, but I would do my best to go through that budget line by line to see how there are opportunities to put back into maintenance issues as well as upgrades.”
Nicks also wants to retain top teachers.
“I don’t want our children to have a temporary teacher and a full-time substitute,” Nicks said. “I want to make sure that we have the best and the brightest in the classroom with our babies on a consistent basis.”
Watch the full interview with Dr. Nahshon Nicks below:
Hank Rogers has lived in Jacksonville for over 25 years. He comes from a long line of educators in his family, and he currently works with the “I’m a Star Foundation” to help Duval County schools with graduation rates and send students off to college and post-secondary options.
If elected, he wants to ensure that all students are safe, and keep as many traditional public schools open as possible. He said the district needs to do a better job at marketing schools and the programs they offer.
“I would really want to work with our school district, our superintendent, on telling the story of what’s happening,” Rogers said. “And I think if we tell the story again, we’ll win students back, we’ll win families back, and hopefully we’ll change the trajectory of the decline in enrollment because families can make a wise decision as to where they want to send their kids.”
Rogers also wants to focus on mental health resources for students.
“I want to really focus my attention on making sure all of our schools have the necessary resources in our schools to deal with our students who are challenged with mental health issues. And so I think that’s very important for me, and so hopefully during my tenure, we will tackle that head on,” Rogers said.
Watch the full interview with Hank Rogers below:
There are four school board elections that will be decided during the August primary. Election Day is Tuesday, and polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m.
To find out more about the races on the ballot, visit our News4JAX Voter’s Guide.