District 5 Education Board candidates have little in common
District 5 Education Board candidates have little in common
By JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star
See also Sioux City Journal
Both candidates for the state Board of Education’s District 5 come with experience serving local education boards.
Patricia Timm, who was appointed to the state board in 2004, served on the Beatrice Board of Education for 16 years.
Alan Jacobsen, the challenger, has been on the Educational Service Unit 6 board for four years.
After that, similarities between the candidates are few.
Timm’s professional experience is education. She taught elementary school five and a half years before serving on the Beatrice board. She also participated on an early childhood planning team for Educational Service Unit 5.
She’s now the executive administrator for One Stop Community Resource Center, a family resource center.
With her background, she is a strong believer in early childhood education.
Research, she said, has given educators a lot of information on early brain development. Kids start learning the minute they're born, and schools and educators need to partner with parents and primary caregivers to support early intervention.
“I don’t see that all children have to go to preschool, but families should have the opportunity,” she said. “It's an economic development issue to a certain extent, as well. There are so many parents that work.”
Jacobsen’s background is business — he owns and operates three businesses, including A-J Roofing and Weatherproofing Co. — and he is more focused on improving the other end of public education: high school.
The National Governors Association has put emphasis on better preparing high school students for college. Jacobsen agrees with that.
Schools need to show they can handle the kids they have before taking on preschoolers, he said. They should put more emphasis in getting young people into professional occupations.
The two candidates also differ on testing of the state’s public school children.
The cost and burden of the state’s School-based, Teacher-led, Assessment Reporting System (STARS) needs to be addressed, Jacobsen said. The state system allows individual districts to develop their own methods of assessing whether students are proficient in reading and mathematics standards.
“It seems so difficult, so complex,” he said.
STARS and the federal No Child Left Behind Act created a burden on teachers, he said. They are overwhelmed by the requirements.
“When do they get to teach?” he asked.
The state board needs to step in and say, “What's wrong with a statewide test, a standardized test?”
Timm said children learn in different ways, and because of that, they need to be assessed in different ways.
“What we're doing in Nebraska is working. Children are being assessed all the time. We're not waiting until April 12th at 2 p.m. If they don't understand what they're learning, there has to be an immediate response,” she said.
She acknowledges it has cost the state and local districts money to do local assessments. But there is excitement in what the districts are doing, she said.
Jacobsen said he has used his business skills in working with his local Educational Service Unit, helping to prioritize assets so there is more money for children.
He is proud that the ESU, which serves 18 schools primarily in Lancaster, Seward, York, Saline and Fillmore counties, lowered its tax levy for two years. He led the way, he said, in getting the ESU to use a portion of its cash reserve — $300,000 — to pay off a 6 percent to 7 percent building loan. He also helped to redo copy machine leases to save money.
Any amount of money in the pockets of taxpayers helps the market, he said.
“I call it prioritizing assets.”
He sees an opportunity at the state level to use his experience with the ESU and as a businessman in working with the Department of Education’s billion-dollar budget.
Timm said she is proud of the work the board has done with essential education, a package of requirements aimed at providing equal educational opportunities across a state that is diverse in its areas of geographical isolation and in its variety of small and large enrollment.
Improving achievement is what essential education is about, she said. And there are concerns that the improvement by students in the middle has flatlined. The board must keep working on what to do about that, she said, as well as what to do to increase achievement by English Language Learners and low-income students.
Timm is also pleased with how the board operates and how it constantly reviews how to do things better for children.
State Education Commissioner Doug Christensen works well with the board, she said.
“As a board, we have some very good discussions. I can't think of a time people haven't been listened to,” she said.
Jacobsen has some concerns about how the board interacts with Christensen, he said. The board sometimes seems to answer to him, he said, rather than the other way around.
Board members aren’t there to be just a stamp of approval, he said.
Jacobsen has been involved in politics since 1990, his interest growing, he said, as he saw how workers compensation affected his company. He ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1994 as a Republican and for Congress in 2000 as a Democrat. He returned to the Republican Party last spring, he said, in part to support Gov. Dave Heineman.
He didn't campaign for the state board seat during the primary, he said, because he wanted to test his name recognition. He came within 450 votes of his opponent, he said.
“I was really pleased at how close I came,” he said. “I think I have a really good chance.”
Timm has used the opportunity of campaigning to explain what the board does and listen to what school districts are doing.
“I'm there because I am a strong believer in public education. I was that way on the local board,” she said.
Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.
District 5 covers most of Southeast Nebraska, including Adams, Webster, Clay, Nuckolls, York, Fillmore, Thayer, Seward, Saline, Jefferson, Gage, Otoe, Johnson, Pawnee, Nemaha and Richardson counties, and the northwest portion of Lancaster County.