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Markita Meeks
Markita Meeks was a candidate for an at-large seat on the Detroit Public Schools Community District Board of Education in Michigan. Meeks was defeated in the at-large general election on November 8, 2016.
Biography
Meeks earned her B.S. in clinical laboratory science from Wayne State University. She later received her master's degree in information resource management from Central Michigan University. Meeks works for the United States Department of Veteran Affairs.[1]
Elections
2016
- See also: Detroit Public Schools elections (2016)
Seven seats on the Detroit Public Schools Community District Board of Education were up for general election on November 8, 2016. There was no primary. A total of 63 candidates filed for the election including 10 of the 11 incumbent board members. The top two vote recipients will serve six-year terms, the next three winners will serve four-year terms, and the remaining two winners will serve two-year terms.[2][3] The winning candidates were Angelique Nicole Peterson-Mayberry, LaMar Lemmons, Georgia Lemmons, Sonya Mays, Misha Stallworth, Deborah Hunter-Harvill, and Iris Taylor.
A June 2016 state reorganization bill split Detroit Public Schools into two entities. The existing district will collect taxes to pay down debts, while a new district overseen by the school board was created to oversee school operations. This bill reduced the school board's membership from 11 to seven after the November 2016 election. The state-appointed Detroit Financial Review Commission will oversee the new district's financial dealings.[2]
Results
Funding
School board candidates in Michigan were required to file pre-election campaign finance reports with their county election offices by October 28, 2016. Post-election reports were due by December 8, 2016.[4]
In Michigan, candidates are prohibited from receiving contributions from corporations or labor organizations. Within 10 days of becoming a candidate, candidates must form a candidate committee. Following the creation of the committee, candidates have an additional 10 days to register the committee with the school district filing official by filing a statement of organization. A candidate committee that does not expect to receive or spend more than $1,000 during the election cycle is eligible to receive a reporting waiver, which allows that committee not to file pre-election, post-election, and annual campaign statements.[5]
October 28 filing
Candidates received a total of $164,533.68 and spent a total of $100,234.02 as of October 30, 2016, according to the Wayne County Clerk.[6] Angelique Nicole Peterson-Mayberry led the field with $57,980.00 in contributions and $40,364.82 in expenditures for the reporting period. Her biggest donor through October 28, 2016, was the United Auto Workers Michigan V-PAC, which contributed $27,500.00 to her candidate committee. Sixteen of the 63 candidates filed campaign finance statements by October 30, 2016. The remaining candidates had not filed their reports or qualified for exemption from reporting.
| Candidate | Contributions | Expenditures | Cash on hand |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tawanna Simpson | $1,200.00 | $996.38 | $203.62 |
| Ida Carol Short | $1,409.15 | $975.00 | $434.15 |
| Herman Davis | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 |
| Angelique Nicole Peterson-Mayberry | $57,980.00 | $40,346.82 | $17,633.18 |
| Kevin Turman | $5,038.99 | $3,555.84 | $1,483.15 |
| Deborah Hunter-Harvill | $3,950.00 | $4,387.83 | -$577.83 |
| John Telford | $19,000.00 | $5,341.52 | $13,658.51 |
| Markita Meeks | $100.00 | $25.00 | $75.00 |
| Mary Kovari | $14,383.54 | $16,883.54 | $4,315.86 |
| Ben Washburn | $500.00 | $0.00 | $500.00 |
| Iris Taylor | $10,725.00 | $6,311.16 | $4,413.84 |
| Sonya Mays | $20,935.00 | $15,450.49 | $0.00 |
| Charmaine Johnson | $0.00 | $1,939.68 | $0.00 |
| Phillip Caldwell II | $2,915.00 | $2,713.37 | $201.67 |
| Leslie Andrews | $16,114.00 | $0.00 | $6,500.00 |
| Penny Bailer | $10,283.00 | $1,307.39 | $8,975.61 |
Endorsements
Meeks was endorsed by the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO.[7]
Campaign themes
2016
Ballotpedia survey responses
Markita Meeks participated in Ballotpedia's 2016 survey of school board candidates. In response to the question "What do you hope to achieve if elected to the school board?" the candidate stated on August 28, 2016:
| “ | As a school board member I hope to play an intricate part of developing policy, curricula, safety, fiscal responsibility, and communication between our parents, teachers, students, and administrators. I plan to advocate for our children's best interest not politics. I plan to scrutinize proposed budgets and hopefully mitigate risks, hold ALL stakeholders equally responsible for our children's education--WE are team and we must participate as a team in our children's education. I am in favor of living wages being paid to recruit and retain top talent and support staff. It is my hope to assist in proving that this new board is capable, competent, and qualified to take Detroit Community District School Board to a level of excellence that the state will relinquish full control back to the Board and the citizens of Detroit. Thank you Ballotpedia for the opportunity to answer these very thought provoking questions.[8][9] | ” |
Ranking the issues
The candidate was asked to rank the following issues based on how they should be prioritized by the school board, with 1 being the most important and 7 being the least important. Each ranking could only be used once.
| Education policy |
|---|
 |
Click here to learn more about education policy in Michigan. |
| Education on the ballot |
| Issue importance ranking | |
|---|---|
| Candidate's ranking | Issue |
| Improving relations with teachers | |
| Closing the achievement gap | |
| Improving post-secondary readiness | |
| Balancing or maintaining the district's budget | |
| Improving education for special needs students | |
| Expanding arts education | |
| Expanding school choice options | |
| “ | All of these are connected. I believe that if the School Board works to improve its relationship with teachers, i.e. paying them living wages and granting incentives to both recruit and retain top talent from teachers to janitors, closing the achievement gap, improving post secondary readiness, balancing the budget , expanding arts education, and expanding school choice options will auto correct themselves. Balancing the budget is important but it can not be the deciding factor in how the Board attempts to educate our children. The autonomy of our teachers to teach must be supported. They, as well as parents and the students themselves are the front line to a successful public education system. The Board must support teachers.[9] | ” |
| —Markita Meeks (August 28, 2016) | ||
Positions on the issues
The candidate was asked to answer nine questions from Ballotpedia regarding significant issues in education and the school district. The questions are highlighted in blue and followed by the candidate's responses. Some questions provided multiple choices, which are noted after those questions. The candidate was also provided space to elaborate on their answers to the multiple choice questions.
| Should new charter schools be approved in your district? (Not all school boards are empowered to approve charter schools. In those cases, the candidate was directed to answer the question as if the school board were able to do so.) |
|---|
| No. Unfortunately,the Board is powerless in making that decision but must defer to FRC for final decisions on that. |
| Which statement best describes the ideal relationship between the state government and the school board? The state should always defer to school board decisions, defer to school board decisions in most cases, be involved in the district routinely or only intervene in severe cases of misconduct or mismanagement. |
| The state should always defer to school board decisions. The state should stay out of local matters that require the democratic process to work. Let the people elect their officials and hold them accountable for their successes or failures. Re-elect them if they perform and don't reelect them if they don't perform to satisfaction. |
| Are standardized tests an accurate metric of student achievement? |
| No. Although standardized tests attempt to gage a students success in college, it fails to take into consideration the emotional and physical state of the one taking the test. It just may be a bad day and if is, the test says "Nope, you won't make it in college." I took a standardized test, both SAT and ACT. Prior to that I remember my junior teachers preparing our class for MEAP tests. It was a big deal then. The entire curriculum was centered around being ready for these tests. The teachers did an excellent job preparing us. i thought this because the test was just what my teachers had given us to prepare for it. |
| What is your stance on the Common Core State Standards Initiative? |
| The CCSS puts a tremendous amount of pressure upon teachers,students and administrators to perform well on the assessment. The idea that now teacher performance and student performance centers around one assessment is thought provoking. However, there are so many factors that can contribute to a students' performance that basing a teachers worth on it makes it invalid. The cost to implement this measure in a culture that is screaming about not having any money, does it make sense? It seems that money could be better allotted to repairing school buildings, ensuring lead free water in the schools, repainting and renovating buildings, ending neighborhood blight, providing better school lunches like we had back in the 80s. |
| How should the district handle underperforming teachers? Terminate their contract before any damage is done to students, offer additional training options, put them on a probationary period while they seek to improve or set up a mentorship program for the underperforming teacher with a more experienced teacher in the district? |
| Put them on a probationary period while they seek to improve. As long as expectations are made clear, tools to meet those expectations are available, and obstacles that impede those expectations are removed, teachers should be held accountable for performing or not. However, to say it's a teachers fault that a class is not performing when the class is over crowded, behavior issues present, hungry children, uninvolved/unengaged parents and students--that is not fair to our teachers. As a Board we must provide them with support, parents and students who are engaged and who came to learn. The Board must make sure that our teachers and students have schools that are safe, have environments conducive to learning from the paint on the walls to having toilet paper in the bathroom stalls. Additional training and mentorship be a part of the Boards program upon hire for our teachers anyway not just when a teacher is under performing. They should be set up for success walking in the door. |
| Should teachers receive merit pay? |
| Yes. In additional to recruiting our top teaching staff, as a Board member I will work hard to retain said staff by proposing incentives that will make our dedicated teachers want to stay in the City of Detroit. A part of those incentives should be merit pay. After reading a few pieces in the Washington Post differing opinions, I agree that "teaching and learning have more to do with dedication, creativity, and commitment than bonuses, incentives, and perks". However, teachers are people too and they have mortgages, car notes, and even children they have to put through college. Why is it considered a social taboo for them to be paid well? They deserve it more than basketball, football, baseball, and hockey players--and yet we have the nerve to gripe about paying them simple living wages. Shame on us as a society! We as a society don't think twice about a basketball player being paid millions of dollars for bouncing a ball down a court. If that player doesn't do well his contract very well may not be renewed. |
| Should the state give money to private schools through a voucher system or scholarship program? |
| No. I think it is inherently wrong that a home owner has to pay for education twice-- when he pays property taxes and again when he or she pays for private school education because public school education is inadequate to meet the education needs of the neighborhood it is in. I don't believe the state should give money to private schools through vouchers or scholarship programs because it sends a message that the state has given up on public education. |
| How should expulsion be used in the district? |
| Students who are disruptive and did not come to school to learn should be removed from the classrooms. Parents must do their jobs and teachers can do theirs. |
| What's the most important factor for success in the classroom: student-teacher ratio, the curriculum, teachers, parent involvement or school administration? |
| The most important factor for success is parental involvement. Parents must engage, train, and prepare children for school. Parents are responsible for communicating the expectations for student behavior, learning, college or vocation goals. They know their children better than any teacher, administrator,etc...they are the first line of defense in educating our children. Partnership with certified teachers and administrators is a recipe for educational success. |
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Markita Meeks Detroit Public Schools. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Elect Markita Meeks, "About," accessed September 20, 2016
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Wayne County, Michigan, "Elections Division-Election Information," accessed August 30, 2016 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "list" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ The Detroit Free Press, "72 people seek seven Detroit school board seats," July 26, 2016
- ↑ Michigan Bureau of Elections, "2016 and 2017 Campaign Finance Filing Schedule," January 12, 2016
- ↑ Genesee County, "Filing Requirements under Michigan's Campaign Finance Act," February 7, 2014
- ↑ Wayne County Clerk, "Wayne County Campaign Finance Information System," accessed October 30, 2016
- ↑ Metro Detroit AFL-CIO, "2016 Political Endorsements," accessed October 4, 2016
- ↑ Ballotpedia School Board Candidate Survey, 2016, "Markita Meeks's responses," August 28, 2016
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
