Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of stories reflecting the answers given by candidates for county, state and federal offices during a political forum Monday ahead of the June 5 primary election. Candidates will appear in The News Courier today through Tuesday.

Candidates for various county, state and federal offices gathered Monday night for a political forum at Athens High School, an event sponsored by the Greater Limestone County Chamber of Commerce, Alabama Veterans Museum and Archives and The News Courier.

Candidates answered questions prepared and posed by News Courier Managing Editor Adam Smith.

Wayne Reynolds and Rich McAdams are Republicans running for the District 8 seat on the Alabama Board of Education. There are no Democrats or Independents in the race. Here are some of the answers to questions posed to candidates for Alabama Board of Education, District 8:

Question for Reynolds: State Sen. Greg Albritton of Atmore prefiled a bill in January that would have abolished an elected state school board and instead created an appointed board of counsel. What are your thoughts on this proposal and why do you think state school board members should be elected as opposed to appointed?

Reynolds 1-minute answer: “I think school board members should be elected because they are responsible to you. There are eight people on the state school board. They are the most influential element that are effective in the state. You’ve got 105 representatives, 35 senators and eight school board members. The key to the school board is election by the people and having them do their jobs. I’ve heard people (school board members) talk about some of the issues in public education and say, ‘Well, it’s not our call.’ You are the active, current school board members — it is your responsibility to represent education in Alabama.”

McAdams 1-minute response: “I believe that legislation and the other one (a proposal that would add two members to the state school board) was indicative of the Legislature’s unhappiness with the current, dysfunctional state board of education. They were bickering and fighting with each other instead of doing what’s best for students and learning in the classroom, which is what the board of education is supposed to be about. Also, (board members were) fighting with the Legislature.”

Reynolds 30-second followup: Inaudible due to background noise.

Question for McAdams: Please name at least one state school board policy you consider onerous to public school systems and please explain how you would change or improve the policy.

McAdams answer: (After talking with teachers, principals and superintendents) “One of the common themes I have heard is the amount of state testing that we do. I drove past my own children’s elementary school — they are grown now — a few weeks ago and saw a sign: ‘State testing April 9 to May 4.’ Four weeks. That does not mean every child was sitting in front of a monitor taking a test four weeks straight. Regular classroom instruction — teaching and learning — is being disrupted for four weeks straight because of state testing. We’ve got to reign that in. I understand we need testings as part of a larger measure of how students and teachers and schools are doing, but it can’t be all-consuming for 1/7 of the school year.”

Reynolds response: “The last evaluation system that was conducted statewide did more to hurt the morale of teachers and school systems and individual schools than anything I’ve seen in observing Alabama education in 40-plus years. The two systems in Limestone and Athens scored a low ‘B’ and one of the Huntsville City Schools system scored a ‘C.’ It’s demoralizing. One school in Jackson County scored an ‘F.’ Part of that problem is the measures of evaluation. Everybody doesn’t do well on the ACT. There are measures that count against students on absenteeism. They have chronic absenteeism — 15 days. My granddaughter, who goes to Bob Jones (High School in Huntsville), is a chronic absentee because she’s been visiting high-level colleges. That’s not right. That’s what’s hurting education — mismanagement and failure to correctly support schools.”

McAdams followup: (Saying he wanted to finish Reynolds’ thought) “We record that measure as a ding against the school. That’s on you, parents. If your kid is not in school 15 days out of a 180-day school year, that’s on the parents. Why in the world do we wrap that up in the score that we’re gonna give a school? We should report it and we should say, ‘Hey parents, 17 percent of our kids aren’t getting here on time.’ It’s a problem, but it’s not the school’s problem.”

Question for Reynolds:If elected, please name a new policy you would recommend implementing that would significantly improve K–12 education statewide. Please be specific, especially in terms of both funding and implementation.

Reynolds answer: “The Alabama school systems have a responsibility to educate all children. I appreciate the sense that some children are going to college, but the failure of our state to fund and allocate for both career education and early intervention is a disaster. We’ve got to do something better. If we really want to improve education, we’ve got a great vocational center here, but we’ve got to support it. We’ve got to realize we have college and career (paths); where is the career part? We have great growth … If we are bringing industry in, we need to incorporate that training and that funding to follow what those students need. If we don’t, the (Limestone) County Commission and (Athens) City Council can recruit all they want to but they (industries) are looking for an educated, trained populace.” Reynolds said he believes there is funding available to do this.

McAdams response: “The policy I want to see put in place would be school board policy, but it would have to be implemented by the Legislature. Currently, school systems get money in all of these different buckets. Here’s your money for salaries, here’s your money for capital expenses, et cetera, et cetera. If you have needs in this bucket, you can’t spend money out of that bucket to do it. We need to push that authority down to superintendents in the local systems. We have 137 school systems in the state, and they are all different. Montgomery doesn’t have all the right answers. They can’t come up with a one-size-fits-all either through the budget or through policy. We need to have local systems making decisions that are right for their communities — their students — to improve teaching and learning in the classroom.”

Reynolds followup:“And part of that funding is the realization that the state board has control. It has significant power. The ones that I see that stand back and do nothing or argue among themselves are creating the box. The state Department of Education has become oppressive; they’ve changed their role. In talking to interim state superintendent (of education) Richardson and the current new (state) superintendent, they realize they’ve got to be helping and not just hindering.”

Question for McAdams: Much of the state’s ability to recruit new industries is based on the promise of providing skilled workers who can fill the positions. While manufacturing companies may seek workers with two-year technical degrees, high-tech scientific companies seek employees with master’s or doctorate degrees in the fields of math and science. In your opinion, is one of these more important than the other? Where should public schools focus their energy?

McAdams answer: “Ourworkforce needs are across the spectrum. There is a Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes report that says Alabama has a current mismatch between what we produce and the workforce that is needed. We have a skills gap in the middle. We have enough high school graduates. We have enough college and beyond graduates. What we are missing is in the middle with technical graduates. We have 500,000 jobs available beyond what we are producing at the current rate over the next six or eight years. But the answer is not that we are going to do just this or just that. We have to be responsive to what the employers need.”

Reynolds answer: “We have enough post-secondary schools. We have some great community colleges, but we need to realize and focus on early guidance and intervention so that our children our students and our parents so they know the opportunities. I will give you an anecdotal story from a visit I had in the Jackson County school system. There were two young ladies there. They finished first in welding in competition in the state of Alabama. Fantastic. They got scholarships. I went up to one of them and said, ‘Well, what are you planning to do?’ and she said, ‘I plan to be a teacher,’ and I said, “I hope you can afford the cut in salary.’ We need to find out what is best for everybody. We need to empower each person and look at individualizing what these students get. Each person needs to help the whole society.”

McAdams followup: “We have needs across the spectrum, and we need to make sure children understand and parents understand what those options are so that kids find what is right for them. This child may want to be a scientist, this one wants to be a doctor, and this one wants to be a welder, and those are all fine. What we don’t want are kids bumbling down to the university, spending a year and half because their buddies went and then leaving with $40,000 worth of debt and no career.”

Closing statements

Each candidate was asked to make a closing statement.

Reynolds, a longtime Athens resident who spent nearly 30 years in education, including nearly 10 as a school superintendent, said his defining quality is his passion.

“I am passionate about everything I do,” he said. “I was passionate as a school superintendent. I’m passionate as a national author for Vietnam Veterans of America. I’m passionate as a parent in supporting myself. I love this community. I love Alabama, and I know we can make education better. We can make education better by electing me to go down there and work and do what I promise to do. Most of you have known me for a long time. You may not agree with me all the time, but you know that if I am passionate about something, I am gonna follow through and I am going to follow through with this effort.”

McAdams served with the Army in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He and his family moved to Hazel Green 27 years ago and he now works in the federal information technology marketplace. He served 12 years on the Madison County Board of Education from 2000-2012, including two years as president, three years as president of the Hazel Green Parent-Teacher Organization, one year as president of the Madison County Council of PTAs, and three years on the Schools Foundation Board.

“I am passionate about education, because I’ve seen how it will change a family,” McAdams said. “My parents both grew up dirt-poor down in Cullman. My dad left school after the eighth grade. Because of some teachers who took an interest in me, I got an appointment at West Point. West Point changed my life. I’ve been trying to get back to the educational community since then … I would like the opportunity to do it again. So, I ask for your vote on June 5.”