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Nicholas A. "Nick" Sakhnovsky
Nicholas A. "Nick" Sakhnovsky
was
a candidate for the District 3 seat on the Broward County School Board in Florida. He
faced
Heather Pomper Brinkworth and Sam Budyszewick in the general election on August 26, 2014, where Brinkworth won.
Elections
2014
The August 26, 2014, general election in Broward County featured six seats up for election. District 1 incumbent Ann Murray defeated challenger Felicia Mychele Brunson. The District 3 race included incumbent Heather Pomper Brinkworth and challengers Sam Budyszewick and Nicholas A. "Nick" Sakhnovsky. Brinkworth retained the seat. Abby Merle Freedman won re-election to the District 4 seat against Robert Alan Mayersohn. District 6 incumbent Laurie Rich Levinson defeated challenger Lisa Lafferty Spince, while fellow board member Nora Rupert ran and won in District 7 against Hubert St. Clair. Donna Pilger Korn won re-election to the District 8 seat without opposition.
The general election determined if candidates for each seat could garner a majority of the vote total. If no candidate had received 50 percent plus one of the general election votes in a particular district, the top two vote recipients would have advanced to the runoff election on November 4, 2014. However, none of the races necessitated a runoff.
Results
| Party | Candidate | Vote % | Votes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nonpartisan |  Heather Pomper Brinkworth Incumbent |
51.5% | 8,421 | |
| Nonpartisan | Nicholas A. "Nick" Sakhnovsky | 31.6% | 5,163 | |
| Nonpartisan | Sam Budyszewick | 16.9% | 2,754 | |
| Total Votes | 16,338 | |||
| Source: Broward County Supervisor of Elections, "Official Results," accessed June 4, 2014 | ||||
Funding
Sakhnovsky reported $9,745 in contributions and $8,478.47 in expenditures to the Broward County Supervisor of Elections, as of July 25, 2014.[1]
Campaign themes
2014
Sakhnovsky's campaign website listed the following themes for the 2014 race:
| “ |
I want to take a slogan from the eighties when people said“I want to be tough on crime”. Well, “I want to be tough on education.” I want to raise the expectations and to accomplish this we start at the top. We need to focus on adequately funding education. The State of Florida invests about $7,000 a year per child in education. A child enters school and has 12 years of education. This is a short critical time period in a person’s life. Don’t be cheap on education. Children who succeed in school become successful members of society, produce income, and pay taxes. These taxes will then be reinvested in education and the community. If a child does not succeed in school, they are more likely to wind up in prison. Prison in Florida costs about $19,000 a year, kids who make mistakes will live in prison 50 years. We invest only $100,000 in a child’s education, but will invest $1,000,000 dollars in incarcerating a prisoner over their lifetime. This does not include extra policing, court costs, and the negative impacts on victims of these crimes. Need to ensure sports, music, art, and other clubs are maintained in Broward County Schools. This only gets accomplished by streamlining operations and ensuring the legislator does not reduce spending on education. These are investments in our youth. Some kids only will attend school, do their homework and behave in class, so they can have the privilege to do sports, music, art, or attend their favorite club at school. Need to set higher standards of dress code, greater respect for individual students and others will results in a higher standard of behavior. It also prepares students for the dress code requirements of the workforce. Are we dressing and preparing our kids in Broward County Schools for college or prison? To accomplish these goals we need to reduce waste and improve efficiencies. In the past, through my volunteering on the Broward County Schools Facilities Task Force I have brought forward some of the deficiencies to the board and the current and past superintendents. These have been either in quarterly meetings with the Superintendent of Broward County Schools, e-mails to board members, and at public meetings. The bigger concerns brought forward were the inefficiencies in transportations and the lack of use by the district of the time clock system. Basically, the School Board was still using paper punch clocks to process timesheets. I do not want to macro manage classrooms. I want to improve the efficiencies of administrative tasks at the Broward County School Board. We also have approximately 500 students who are completing their school year at their school prior to be displaced from their home and may be living with relative or other short term housing. This is not mandated and not funded by the state. We need to determine other counties’ policies regarding this and consider giving high school students in this situation a $26 bus pass when our own internal costs exceed this amount to provide transportation. In general, when our internal costs exceed $26 per month, providing bus passes to high school children makes sense. Please note public transit might not work well and we should use some kind of formula as long as public transit does not exceed 1.5 times the school bus transit time. Need to incorporate magnet and Nova into this system as well. Using the county buses was also suggested thru Bertha Henry, Interim County Administrator in Board of County. Quote from a Memorandum August 7, 2008, from Kayla Olsen, Director Office of Management and Budget in response to questions raised at Budget Workshops on June 17, 2009 "Explore whether it is feasible for the School Board to purchase monthly bus passes in lieu of providing transportation to high schools.” On June 6, 2008, BCT staff members met with members of the School Board of Broward County's (SBBC) Transportation Department staff in order to identify possible partnerships for operational, budgetary, and fuel cost savings. The initial meeting allowed staff from both BCT and the SBBC to gain a better understanding of each other's operations in the hopes of working together to more effectively provide transportation services for the County and reduce costs. To date, there is still no action on Broward County School Board. Review of summer school programs for ESE students is needed. Instead of one hour or two hours a day, consider going two or four hours every second day. Paying for a snack and an attendant for a 15 minute recess is still cheaper than all the transportation costs. For summer programs which are not complete days consider having one zone at a school Monday/Wednesday full day for one group and the other zone Tuesday/Thursday for the other group. Zones would be driven by bus route efficiencies. Even if we have to provide a free lunch it is probably 1/2 the price of bussing children to and from school. This would double pupil per mile density along bus routes and could cut transportation costs in half. Duval's Transportation Sub-committee recommended converting the 6 days of early release to 4 full days of school and two complete non-instructional days, or allowing teachers to work late the 6 days a year and being rewarded by having two extra complete days off. We informed the previous Superintendent and we even got a response from Jeffrey S. Moquin, Executive Director, Support Operations. He responded to clarification from his staff in the interpretation of the 180 days vs. the net 900 hours of instructional time. We understand this would have to be negotiated with the BTU. The goal was to provide the same amount of classroom hours during the year, and the same amount of hours of non-instructional work time and eliminate 2 days of transportation. However, there is still no action on this issue. We need to use the new training facilities to give the students on the job training, including the considerable costs of maintaining our own busses. The students can receive valuable training in vehicle maintenance and repair. This would give on the job training and reduce our own maintenance costs. |
” |
| —Nicholas Sakhnovsky's campaign website, (2014) | ||
Recent news
This section links to a Google news search for the term "Nick + Sakhnovsky + Broward + County + Public + Schools"
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Broward County Supervisor of Elections, "Candidates for 2014 Election Cycle," accessed July 25, 2014
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Nick Sakhnovsky for Broward County School Board District 3, "Solutions," accessed July 25, 2014
