School board candidate wants to rally parents and teachers

From Stacie Dern

Greetings Educators and Parents
My name is Stacie Dern, some of you will recognize my name because of my children and some of you will recognize my name because I pre-interned in your class. I am a parent of a fourth grade child in Duval County and an early education major. I have two older daughters that have been through the system and the differences between the education my 19 and 22-year old daughters received and the one my ten-year old is receiving is stark. I have been to enough pre-intern hours to recognize that what is being taught is not advantageous to the children, nor is it developmentally appropriate in many cases. I am a member of some closed Facebook groups that focus on improving education; groups that encourage parents to have a voice because our current system is bad for our children and unfair to teachers.
        I would like to make a change, which is why I am running for school board seat 7 in the upcoming election this year. I would love to hear your stories and create some publicity in order to bring autonomy back to teaching. Please come to the Avenues mall on Saturday, January 9 at 10:10amnext to Starbucks and tell me how I can help improve a profession with which I am still excited about being a part sometime in the future. It worries me that my son is losing his love of school because it is not engaging, despite the amazing teachers he has. It is the system that is failing him and teachers are being punished for recognizing this failure and not allowed to step in and help. The system is not working so I want to change the system. I went through the 543 pages of email addresses on the Duval County website and copied most of the teachers from elementary and some from secondary school into this email. I excluded the office staff and principals, not because I do not believe in them, but because I do not want to add undue burden on them. 

The upcoming testing and pre-testing will not stop unless we all stand together and make our voices heard. I want to be the voice of those educators who want to speak out, but are afraid. I am still working on my degree and will be doing my official internship in the fall. If I do not win the seat on the school board, I will be applying for a teaching job. It might decrease my chances of being hired, but I cannot be idle when so much is at stake. Children are not numbers and they are not products. My child is not a product that can be stamped “on track for college”, and it’s time to stop treating them as such. Please share this email with family and friends. Thank you for reading. 

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