Eddie Karriker

Candidate for: Mooresville Graded School Board
Occupation: Clerical assistant, Mooresville High School

What are the biggest issues facing your constituency?
Reading ability amongst our young people. We have students in all of our school levels that are weak in reading and this directly affects everything else that we do and teach… working on reading I think can help close the achievement gap.

Growth… the growth % of our school district as a whole is up and does not look like it will go down, and we have to plan for that.
Finding and retaining quality teachers at all levels. There is so much that is involved here in getting and keeping quality teachers; many times I think that we fill positions with great teachers but we do not keep them in the district.

i. In talking with several teachers that have been in the MGSD and left, the greatest thing that I hear that caused them to leave was that they were over pressured to do “other things” (i.e. sports and other things that take them away from the focus of the classroom).
ii. Teachers have to feel that they have and will get support from the administration on all levels.
iii. When we get new teachers I am not sure that we do the best job of helping them and mentoring them as we should. (Example: A lot of time you will get a new teacher and then they will be a new coach and we don’t always make sure that they have all the support that they need, this not only causes a teacher turn over, but a coaching turn over as well).

Growth and diversity can be to our advantage if we can anticipate the needs early.

Of those issues, which do you feel is the most important?
Reading ability of the students on all levels, I do not think that we can successfully close the gaps that we have if we do not correct this problem. We have students on all different levels that struggle to read on the level in which they are on.

What, if any, prior experience do you have that will help you if elected?
I have been worked in the Mooresville Graded School District for 5 years on various levels and feel that I can bring a different perspective to the table as a board member.

What is one particular thing you think the council is doing right? Doing wrong?
I think that MGSD is working hard as building for growth, but that is not something that can stop at all. MGSD is going to be growing more and more and we have to plan for that.

I think that MGSD needs to look closer at some of the class sizes and how those can be adjusted in order to help the with the test scores we have.

Posted on 07/01/07 at 01:10 AM
Mooresville •Mooresville Graded School District • (0) Comments

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