Derek Barrs and Janie Ruddy are vying for the District 3 seat on the Flagler County School Board.
The seat is currently held by Colleen Conklin who is not running for reelection.
Derek Barrs
Derek Barrs, 51, told The News-Journal that the community he grew up in was highly involved and invested in him. Now, he is running for school board because he has a strong desire to make that same positive impact in Flagler County.
“I’m committed to bringing a practical approach to the school board, listening to our teachers and staff as we begin developing policy that’s going to affect everyone,” he said.
Barrs is the current associate vice president at HNTB Corporation and a retired chief with the Florida Highway Patrol.
He believes his experience in executive-level leadership roles coupled with his extensive background in law enforcement will allow him to serve as a sensible voice on the board and contribute significantly in providing top-quality education to future generations.
“Our student body now has so much in front of them,” Barrs said. “They have a lot of challenges as well. But I think that this generation has so much knowledge that they're going to be able to change the world in a positive way if it's funneled properly, but we also need to ensure that we are educating them in a way that is going to prepare them for the future.”
His top priorities are:
- Keeping schools safe by proactively planning and focusing on school safety and security.
- Ensuring every student receives a high-quality education.
- Fostering community partnerships and engaging stakeholders to enhance resources and support for teachers, staff and administrators.
Barrs believes students won't be able to learn if campuses are unsafe. He values the role school resource officers play in keeping schools safe and thinks it’s important to plan ahead for events that will "hopefully never happen" so SROs and other stakeholders are prepared to mitigate tragedies if one did occur.
“Having a school resource officer on our campuses is vital,” he said. “I think it’s more than just from a safety standpoint, but it’s also building the relationships that students, parents, faculty need to have with our law enforcement and our community, and I will always support making sure that we have law enforcement, school resource officers on our campuses.”
Barrs said he believes in parent choice and supports parents in making decisions that have their family’s best interest in mind; however, he also noted that one of his goals is to work with community leaders, district staff, Superintendent LaShakia Moore and other school stakeholders to ensure Flagler County Schools can be a “model for other school districts to follow.”
He said the district will stand out as a top choice for families in the area if schools are safe and focused on the core of education with quality teachers.
Barrs said teachers have told him that they’re exhausted.
“The words that I hear from a lot of teachers are, ‘I’m not doing this anymore. It’s not worth it,’” he said. “It’s worth it to educate, but they have so much that’s being placed on them, and the compensation for that is not worth them being able to continue doing that for long term.”
Barrs said local and state legislators need to prioritize increasing teacher salaries.
“We’ve got to retain good teachers because if we do not retain good teachers, we’re not going to have the outcomes that we are expecting for our students,” he said.
When asked what can be done to ensure quality mental health for students, teachers and district staff, Barrs said resource accessibility and early intervention are critical.
And while he believes in the necessity of church and state separation, he doesn’t necessarily have a problem with parents allowing their children to see chaplains at schools.
“I think there would be some (families) that would oppose and make sure that we have a separation of church and state,” he said. “I believe that if the parents choose to be a part of that or would like to participate in that, then their child could. If not, then they would not need to be a part of that.”
As for artificial intelligence in schools, Barrs said he thinks it can bring diversity in thoughts and ideas, which could be helpful. However, he wouldn’t want artificial intelligence to do a student’s work.
When asked about diversity in literature, Barrs said students “need to learn from all aspects” as long as they are age-appropriate.
“We need books to learn, and I think it’s a great educational tool; however, the books need to be age-appropriate,” he said.
Janie Ruddy
Janie Ruddy, 50, is a parent, education advocate and former teacher. She currently works as the director of professional learning for n2y, a special education software, curriculum and learning tools company.
She is running for school board because she believes every child should have access to an excellent education. Ruddy wants to focus on students’ needs, collaborate with stakeholders and practice transparency, accountability and inclusivity. She always tells her children to be problem solvers rather than problem makers, and she plans to bring that mindset to Flagler County’s school board.
“I see an opportunity and a need at what I feel is a critical juncture to put our county back on a positive trajectory,” she said. “Supporting Superintendent LaShakia Moore with her strategic vision in a positive way, reducing personal agendas and refocusing the school board work on what’s best for students and parents in our county.”
Her top priorities are:
- Assisting students in college and career readiness by opening doors to post-secondary scholarships and opportunities.
- Increasing curriculum support and policies to earn an ‘A’ rating and ensure quality instruction for all students.
- Nurturing a culture of mutual respect, trust and assumption of positive intent in Flagler Schools, creating an environment in which teachers want to join and stay.
Ruddy told The News-Journal that safety is also a “number one concern.”
She said the county has already taken “tremendous” strides, citing glass dividers in school front offices and fencing upgrades as examples, among others.
“We cannot learn in an environment where we don’t feel safe,” Ruddy started. “And I look forward to (continuing) those very creative and common-sense solutions to increase, continue to increase, the safety on our campuses.”
Ruddy also noted school choice as a “top concern” because families are opting out of public schools due to the environment, rather than academic rigor.
“When I speak to parents, it’s often a concern around bullying, behavior (and) physical fights, and there is real concern that the bullying matrix being used and implemented in Flagler County Schools is perhaps not effective,” Ruddy said. “I think that would warrant a review hearing from parents evaluating its effectiveness.”
For Flagler Schools to be a top choice, Ruddy believes the district needs to look at its culture and conflict resolution process. Additionally, she thinks the district can regain trust with parents by highlighting the success of Flagler County Schools graduates.
“It starts with that trust with parents by being a positive, collaborative organization that they will want to entrust their children to,” she said.
Another priority for Ruddy is teacher recruitment and retention. Teacher pay must change, she said, something she plans to advocate for.
“Some of those elements that we could be focusing on are finding ways to prioritize that funding. There are a lot of initiatives, decisions, new governing rules that are actually increasing costs for schools and taking away from that federal and state budget,” she said, adding that if those rules are passed at the state level, the money should not be diverted from teacher pay.
If elected, Ruddy said she would ensure students, teachers and district employees have high-quality mental health by utilizing and strengthening systems already in place.
Guidance counselors, for instance, she said, are diverting more time to tasks like test administration when they should be focusing on supporting students, serving as a liaison between the school and parents, and providing support, encouragement and a trusted shoulder.
“I would start at looking at being able to protect the time that guidance counselors enact programs related to mental health and the resilience within the resiliency parameters that have been verified by the state,” she said.
Additionally, she said she would prefer the district not use chaplains as school counselors due to a potential violation of church and state separation.
“It would be very difficult for a chaplain to really separate themselves from their religious beliefs as it is inherent in who they are and why they serve, and inevitably, that is something that, especially in the relationship of a counselor, can cross those lines very quickly,” she said. “I would want to rely on the school psychologists, guidance counselors who are highly trained individuals in supporting students’ mental health, rather than creating another scenario that can divide our community.”
Ruddy is not in favor of a “hyper-restrictive environment on literature,” and thinks it would be a “disservice” to restrict students from seeing perspectives that are different than their own. However, she also believes there needs to be some oversight on violent, profane and sexual content and that teachers should advertise materials they share in their classrooms to parents.
“It’s interesting that the arguments are being made that this literature is indoctrinating children into a certain belief system, but banning is also doing the same for the other belief system,” she said.
When asked about artificial intelligence’s place in schools, Ruddy described it as a collaborative tool, and said that just like any other tool, students will need to be taught how to use it.
“There are extremely creative ways that students can be challenged unlimitedly using AI, if appropriate,” she said.
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