Get ready to vote in the School Superintendent Dem primary

The job is not rooted in policymaking. Rather it is heavy with administrative duties including:

• conducting bond and override elections,
• filling vacancies on school boards,
• overseeing budgets to ensure reporting is accurate,
• handling registration of teaching certificates
• and facilitating training opportunities for educators, among other responsibilities.

A common misconception about the position is that the County Schools Chief has the power to tell schools what to teach or how to spend their money, but those are matters that are left to local governing boards.

Meet the candidate

Gordy, 66, retired from teaching after 28 years in the classroom.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Arizona.

Gordy plans to renew his teaching certification, a requirement to hold the office.

He has never held an elected office.

Meet the candidate

Williams, 42, is a sixth grade mathcounts teacher at Mansfeld Middle School. He has worked as a teacher, coach, and as an assistant director/principal.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Arizona and a master’s degree in educational leadership with a K-12 principal certificate from Northern Arizona University.

Williams holds a valid teaching certificate, which is a requirement to hold the office.

He has never held an elected office.

Michael Gordy: “Trying to let school districts know that the county superintendent’s office is there as a resource for districts and teachers and education support professionals. I would like to have a discussion with superintendents of the different districts about the concept of everyone teaches, everyone learns and having district office people fill in for teachers every three weeks. And business partnerships because the wonder of public education is the more people who are involved, the better everybody is.”

Dustin Williams: “The first thing is getting the community to know the position, to know there is a means of assistance for all the districts. The very beginning stages is building a relationship with the community. I’m extremely passionate about education and very interested in making education in our community excellent. I’m a natural leader, I have a lot of charisma and I get people really excited about ideas and working together and that’s been a gift that I have from being a teacher to being an administrator to being a coach.”

Michael Gordy: “Funding because without funding, our options are severely limited.” Whether Gordy is elected, he intends to gather a group of people who would travel to Phoenix on a weekly basis to speak with “friends of education” and “opponents of education” to convince them of the need to make positive change.

Dustin Williams: “I don’t think we’re connected enough. I think we can build our business community to work with education. That’s what I want to do, I want to be that bridge-builder.” Williams says he would conduct a needs assessment for public schools, charter schools, private schools, home schools and parochial schools to identify needs and connect them with community organizations that can fulfill the need.

Michael Gordy: “In classrooms where they have a highly qualified teacher who is really dedicated to her or his students, I think education is doing well here.”

Dustin Williams: “We have a large amount of people and organizations that want to help. I think we are a very caring, close community and I think we’re meeting the needs of most children to the best that we can so far. And we have a lot of great educators that are highly skilled working in this industry.”

Michael Gordy: “Judging by testing, one would have to say it’s not particularly good. The problem is when you’re dealing with a standardized test, is the problem the test or is the problem the fact that the kids don’t know the material?” Gordy believes the high stakes nature of standardized tests impacts student performance, calling it a “gotcha test” rather than a “diagnostic test.” He added that more resources need to be put into schools serving low-income children given the correlation between performance on tests and socioeconomic status.

Dustin Williams: “I think students are working really hard, as hard as they can. I think the AzMERIT test that shows they are failing doesn’t show the true character of our kids. I think there are some areas we can improve upon but I don’t want to judge our kids solely on one state assessment.” Williams believes that if professional development was geared more toward connecting with students by understanding their backgrounds and implementing culturally relevant teaching, students would be better served and academic performance would improve.