Gaston Horne
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Gaston Horne ran for election to the Baltimore County Public Schools to represent District 4 in Maryland. Horne lost in the primary on June 26, 2018.
Horne completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2018. Click here to read the survey answers.
Elections
2018
General election
General election for Baltimore County Public Schools, District 4
Makeda Scott defeated Kathleen White in the general election for Baltimore County Public Schools, District 4 on November 6, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Makeda Scott (Nonpartisan) | 54.2 | 21,644 | |
| Kathleen White (Nonpartisan) | 45.1 | 18,005 | ||
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.7 | 289 | ||
| Total votes: 39,938 (100.00% precincts reporting) | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for Baltimore County Public Schools, District 4
The following candidates ran in the primary for Baltimore County Public Schools, District 4 on June 26, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | Kathleen White (Nonpartisan) | 30.6 | 5,272 | |
| ✔ | Makeda Scott (Nonpartisan) | 23.4 | 4,031 | |
| Regina Ann Smith (Nonpartisan) | 20.7 | 3,574 | ||
| Tara Huffman (Nonpartisan) | 12.7 | 2,194 | ||
| Autrese Thornton (Nonpartisan) | 6.5 | 1,114 | ||
| Gaston Horne (Nonpartisan) | 6.1 | 1,055 | ||
| Total votes: 17,240 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2018
Ballotpedia survey responses
- See also: Ballotpedia's candidate surveys
Gaston Horne participated in Ballotpedia's candidate survey on June 7, 2018. The survey questions appear in bold, and Gaston Horne's responses follow below.[1]
What would be your top three priorities, if elected?
| “ | 1) Ensuring equity in funding across the entire Baltimore County School system. 2) Examining current curriculum to ensure children are not only getting necessary academic courses, but arts, music and life skills such as personal financial literacy. 3) Engaging parents, teachers and the community in the goings-on of the school board - specifically by going out and attending school functions and PTA meetings to let people know whats going on.[2][3] | ” |
What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about? Why?
| “ | I am interested in how knowledge is given out to the public. A lot of decisions seem to be made without even alerting those affected, especially in the case of the school system. I would like to make sure that people have every possible chance to be aware of whats going on in their school system.Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; invalid names, e.g. too many[3]
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Ballotpedia also asked the candidate a series of optional questions. Gaston Horne answered the following:
Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow and why?
| “ | I don't particularly look up to any one person within the realm of politics, but I aspire to be a person who sticks to his word and his beliefs. Now those beliefs and promises have to be well researched and thought out, but I want to be the type of politician who people ACTUALLY trust.[3] | ” |
| “ | There is no one book or essay I could point to, because no one thing informs my thinking. I try my best to listen to a wide variety of trustworthy sources and to talk with different people about what they think. I have found that testing my beliefs through conversation with others ensures that I am well informed.[3] | ” |
| “ | Great communication and a spirit of cooperation. Should I win, my job would be one that requires service. I have to be able to communicate the happenings and ideas of the school board to the community in an effective way to make sure everyone understands, and I have to be able to listen to the community and their needs. After that, I must be able to cooperate with the members of the board no matter our differences to ensure that we implement whats best for the county.[3] | ” |
| “ | I believe that I am good at fostering relationships. I enjoy meeting new people and speaking with them about what they're going through. I think this is an extremely important skill considering how much school board members need to be aware of whats going on in different communities throughout the county. It's important to be able to foster trust with the community.[3] | ” |
| “ | Research. Every decision that is made as a school board member will effect literally 120,000 students, their parents, and their teachers and administrators. Decisions cannot be made from a place of ignorance. Every decision must be well thought out, properly researched and thoroughly discussed with other board members, teachers, parents, and even students.[3] | ” |
| “ | As long as the Baltimore County Public School system improves, then I'm not worried about a particular legacy. It's not about me, just about improving the system for future students.[3] | ” |
| “ | My very first job was at Papa Johns. I was there for a total of 4 years as a regular team member. I remember enjoying being around most of the people I worked with and coming home smelling like cheese and pepperoni every time I had to work.[3] | ” |
| “ | I think I like New Year's the most. It's fun no matter what I end up doing. I enjoy reflecting on how the year went and looking forward to what I want to accomplish during the next.[3] | ” |
| “ | In all honesty, I'd want to be Link from The Legend of Zelda. He's strong, courageous, and even though he's silent, he constantly creates meaningful relationships with other characters through his service to them.[3] | ” |
| “ | We help create or edit the policies (and budget) that Baltimore County Schools will operate under. The budget is the most consistent responsibility, but we also need to constantly be looking to change and develop curriculum, discipline guidelines, hiring guidelines and then make sure everything is running smoothly on top of that. I also believe that part of my duty is to go out and inform communities of changes that are being made and the reasoning behind the changes.[3] | ” |
| “ | My constituents are the residents of Baltimore County and those that work and attend those schools. My job is to make sure Baltimore County's schools are functioning in the best interests of ALL students and teachers. BCPS should provide an education that truly trains students to thrive in their ventures after high school.[3] | ” |
| “ | The best way to do this is to listen to their needs. As different groups tell you what they need, it becomes easier and easier to find the common threads that affect everyone, and those are the first things that need to be addressed. Once those things are taken care of, then we begin the work of addressing more specific needs of different groups.[3] | ” |
| “ | The most reliable way to communicate with constituents is to go out and speak with them. Community meetings, school board meetings and PTA meetings are the best times to directly speak with stakeholders. I would hope to get the chance to go speak with everyone across the county at some point, but the primary focus would be the northwestern district where I am running.[3] | ” |
| “ | I hope to make use of things that were already supposed to be in use. There already exists something called a regional advisory group. These groups are made up of parents and community members within an area and they are supposed to advise the school board member that comes from that district. I would like to utilize that group to make sure communication channels remain open between parents and the school board. Outside of those groups I plan to attend PTA meetings and push to hold more official school board meetings at other locations so that more parents are able to attend.[3] | ” |
| “ | I believe that it is always best to recruit the absolute best and brightest and those people can take a great different many forms. Regardless of where a person comes from, how they look or how they are different, we must get the best and brightest into our school system. To that end, we must acknowledge that it is harder for some to rise to the top, and we must rectify those imbalances and ensure that we get the absolute best for our students.[3] | ” |
| “ | Money and politics seem to consistently get in the way of education. For some reason whenever money is needed elsewhere in the budget, education is the first to be cut. On top of that, we've seen in Baltimore County that the school board has allowed their own personal politics to get in the way of making good decisions, and consistently made decisions in groups regardless of what the community has expressed. Ensuring equity in funding will go a long way to correct this imbalance.[3] | ” |
| “ | Good teaching is hard to quantify because each student learns differently. In my opinion, the best teachers are the ones that either get students excited to learn new things or help students improve the most. Because of that, I don't think that standardized testing is the way to go as far as evaluating teaching. I think we need to look more towards student improvement as the measuring stick for teachers. For the sake of students and their success, we need more teachers that can take a C student to B as opposed to teachers who can get their students to memorize a test answer.[3] | ” |
| “ | Obviously technology skills will be paramount going forward. But I think students still need to master the basics. No matter what happens, people will always need to be able to communicate verbally and in written form, and math is a must. However in our increasingly diverse world, students must learn other languages. I also would like students to learn personal finance in order to better prepare themselves for the realities of having credit, loans and mortgages, and I think vocational training could help those students that don't feel like college is right for them.[3] | ” |
| “ | The value of a high school diploma is correlated to the training one has received by the time they've gotten it. If we can make curriculum more relevant to surviving as an adult then we can improve the value of a diploma. We do this by including training that is relevant to having and maintaining a career - communication, finances, second languages and vocational training.[3] | ” |
| “ | Students need to be exposed to additional languages from an earlier age, preferable during grade school. I believe that students should always have access to music and arts programs. I think that vocational opportunities should be expanded and we should try and help students who plan to forgo college gain vocational or technological certifications. And finally I think it would be wise to teach students basic life skills such as personal financial literacy.[3] | ” |
| “ | First and foremost, we must address the most pressing needs first. Never should there be a situation where one school has to wait to fix a pressing issue while another school has a luxury added to it. Second, funding for programming should be awarded based student need over testing success. And along with that, it should be a surety that every student and school has access to the same programming as others across the county. Students should not have to travel across the county for one program.[3] | ” |
| “ | Schools need to be safe, but not at the expense of teacher or student comfort (within reason). There should NOT be guns in school. I think the key to school safety is in tackling the problem, not its symptoms. While shootings do occur more often nowadays, there are other safety issues that need to be addressed as well. Issues like bullying, teacher safety and public access to the school building. All of these require more research but it would be foolish to rush into a plan without seeing how that plan would affect student learning, which is the most important aspect of school.[3] | ” |
| “ | Supporting students mental health is a matter of trust. Students won't speak up if they don't trust administrators or if they fear there will be unfair consequences. I think it best to try and find a model that includes a team of people in each school specifically dedicated to making sure students are mentally in a good place. They would actively work with students from small things, like making sure a student is doing ok at home to bigger issues like bullying. For teachers, I think it's a bit easier because most adults know the benefit of speaking up about mental health. But teachers need their own dedicated administrator to talk to - preferably someone specifically for them. It might also help to try and build more time in the day for teachers to simply relax.[3] | ” |
| “ | Technology is extremely important. I don't think the STAT program is working very well right now, but I do like the idea behind it. Students need access to technology and personal tablets or computers would be an excellent substitute for the traditional textbook, and could be updated much faster than a traditional book. More importantly, the tablets could help expose students to other cultures, not just by way of information, but through direct communication with students from other countries and cultures - something that would be extremely beneficial for students as we move towards a more global community.[3] | ” |
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: The candidate's answers have been reproduced here verbatim without edits or corrections by Ballotpedia.
- ↑ Ballotpedia's candidate survey, "Gaston Horne's responses," June 7, 2018
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 3.20 3.21 3.22 3.23 3.24 3.25 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
| Baltimore County Public Schools elections in 2018 | |
| Baltimore County, Maryland | |
| Election date: | Primary Election: June 26, 2018 • General Election: November 6, 2018 |
| Candidates: | District 1: • Deborah Arnetta Cason • Pete Fitzpatrick • Matt Gresick • Lisa Mack • Echo Prana Salisbury • Richard Young District 2: • Anthony Miles Glasser • Cheryl Pasteur District 3: • Incumbent, Kathleen Causey • John Egan • Paul Evitts • Paul Konka • John Lang III • Joan Magnani • Michael Petrella • Michael Voelker District 4: • Gaston Horne • Tara Huffman • Makeda Scott • Regina Ann Smith • Autrese Thornton • Kathleen White District 5: • Incumbent, Julie Henn • Peter Beilenson District 6: • Edward Kitlowski • Lily Rowe District 7: • William Feuer • Rod McMillion • Eric Washington |
| Important information: | What was at stake? |
