Pat Hynes
Pat Hynes was a member of the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, representing Hunter Mill District. Hynes assumed office in 2012. Hynes left office on December 12, 2019.
Hynes ran for re-election to the Fairfax County Public Schools to represent Hunter Mill District in Virginia. Hynes won in the general election on November 3, 2015.
Biography
Hynes earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Virginia and a J.D. from Vanderbilt University. She previously worked as an attorney with Simpson, Thacher and Bartlett, New York. Hynes was an elementary school teacher in the district from 2002 to 2011. She has two children who graduated from district schools.[1]
Elections
2019
Pat Hynes did not file to run for re-election.
2015
The Fairfax County School Board is a 12-member board elected to serve four-year terms. Three seats are elected at large and nine seats are elected by district.[2] All 12 seats were on the ballot on November 3, 2015.
At-large incumbents Ryan McElveen, Ilryong Moon and Ted Velkoff faced Robert Copeland, Omar Fateh, Jeanette Hough, Manar Jean-Jacques, Peter Marchetti and Burnette Scarboro for three seats. While Moon and McElveen won re-election, Velkoff was defeated, placing fourth to challenger Hough.
Braddock District incumbent Megan McLaughlin, Hunter Mill District incumbent Pat Hynes and Providence District incumbent Patricia Reed faced Katherine Pettigrew, Mark Wilkinson and Dalia Palchik, respectively. Dranesville District incumbent Jane Strauss competed against challenger Peter Kurzenhauser. McLaughlin, Hynes, and Strauss won re-election; the fourth incumbent, Reed, lost to Palchik.
The races for both the Mount Vernon District and Sully District seats featured newcomers after neither incumbent filed for re-election. Karen Corbett Sanders defeated W. Anthony Stacy in the Mount Vernon race, while Karen Keys-Gamarra lost to Thomas Wilson in the Sully District race. Lee District incumbent Tamara Derenak Kaufax, Mason District incumbent Sandra Evans and Springfield District incumbent Elizabeth Schultz all ran unopposed and won re-election to their seats.
Results
| Fairfax County School Board, Hunter Mill District, General Election, 2015 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
 Pat Hynes Incumbent |
61.3% | 12,955 |
| Mark Wilkinson | 38.4% | 8,118 |
| Write-in votes | 0.29% | 61 |
| Total Votes | 21,134 | |
| Source: Virginia Department of Elections, "2015 November General", accessed November 3, 2015 | ||
Funding
Hynes reported $46,854.97 in contributions and $42,562.12 in expenditures to the Virginia State Board of Elections, which left her campaign with $4,292.85 on hand as of October 28, 2015.[3]
Endorsements
Hynes received official endorsements for her campaign from the Fairfax County Democratic Party, Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, Fairfax Education Association PAC and The Washington Post.[4][5][6][7]
2011
| Fairfax County Public Schools, Hunter Mill District General Election 4-year term, 2011 |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Vote % | Votes | |
| Nonpartisan | Pat Hynes |
57.8% | 13,159 | |
| Nonpartisan | Nancy Linton | 42.2% | 9,618 | |
| Total Votes | 22,777 | |||
| Source: Fairfax County, Virginia, "Official Returns," accessed July 22, 2015 | ||||
Campaign themes
2015
Candidate website
Hynes' campaign website listed the following themes for 2015:
| “ |
The School Board’s Role Maintaining Fairfax County Public Schools’ world-class reputation in the twenty-first century demands visionary leadership. This community expects its schools to be the best. We are preparing our students for careers that do not yet exist. What we know for sure is that our graduates will have to be flexible, creative problem-solvers who collaborate well and have strong communication skills. We must continue to build a culture that innovates from the classroom, supports our world class educators and sets high expectations for every student. Independent oversight of the school system depends on School Board members’ asking the right questions and having independent access to information. The current School Board has greatly improved the independent audit committee, adding more Board members, removing staff members from voting positions and expanding the scope of work to include program audits. The Board has approved and is in the process of hiring an auditor general, who will report directly to the School Board. The Board hired a second auditor two years ago and will soon add citizen volunteers to the Board's audit comittee as well. In a tough fiscal climate, it is especially important that the School Board have a robust independent audit function. In policy areas other than budget, School Board members leverage their time by empowering other people - citizens, employee groups and other experts - to help them stay informed. The current Board has instituted monthly meetings between Board members, the Superintendent and representatives of our employee associations. In addition, the Board has several advisory committees that review the school system's progress in areas such as student health, advanced academics and minority student achievement. The current Board has made some improvements in the effectiveness of the advisory committees, but there is more work to do. Advisory committee members' time and efforts should always lead to measurable improvements in policy and practice. Communication is the daily work of School Board members. With no office space or desk to sit behind, a School Board member’s office is the whole community. That, of course, is an enormous responsibility, so in addition to being visible several times a week at events and gathering places throughout the community, Board members must have access to user-friendly communication tools. Fairfax County Public Schools’ web site contains a tremendous amount of information, but is clunky for users and is in the process of being updated. The school system is making better use of social media tools, like Facebook and Twitter, powerful platforms for give-and-take between elected officials and the community. Finally, it is very important for School Board members to be in constant communication with other elected officials at the local, state and federal levels, advocating for our schools and for strong communities to support them. Support for Educators Teachers, specialists, instructional assistants, school-based administrators - all the people who educate our children every day - deserve our respect and support. We know that is not just about salary, but after years of compensation decisions that have not kept pace with surrounding jurisdictions, we are at a critical juncture. We are losing experienced, dedicated teachers to other school systems and to the private sector and our school system can not continue to thrive in that environment. We must maintain competitive salaries and benefits for our teachers and other school-based staff. That means restoring annual step and cost-of-living increases. It also means protecting a secure and dignified retirement, a promise we have made to our educators in part to compensate for wages that do not keep up with the cost of living in Fairfax County. Job satisfaction is about more than pay and benefits. Teachers consistently tell us that they don't have the time they need to do the job as well as they want to: time to plan, to reflect, to communicate with students, parents and with each other. In every policy decision, we must innovate from the classroom, not impose edicts on the classroom. Our excellent educators deserve the training and support they need to maintain nurturing environments and high expectations for all children. In an increasing number of schools, class size has become a significant factor in teacher time, a trend that is not sustainable. We should recognize teachers who take on leadership roles in our schools and encourage all of our employees to participate in policy discussions at the highest levels. Employee organizations - including representatives of retired employees - must be active partners in policy making. Budgets School Boards in Virginia have no revenue generating authority. They are dependent on state and local governing bodies for funding. We are fortunate here in Fairfax County that our County Board of Supervisors provides over 70% of the school system's operating budget. The remainder of the roughly $2.6 billion annual budget comes from the state (just over 20%) and from federal grants. That local support for FCPS reflects this community's strong commitment to public education. For half a century, since the early 1960s, Fairfax County residents invested heavily in public schools, building the world-class school system we have today. The system weathered economic downturns because they were relatively brief, and recovery was swift. Since 2008, however, revenues have not kept pace with growth and needs, giving rise to eight years of increasingly difficult budget cuts. The school system has had to raise class size three times and teacher compensation is falling dangerously behind surrounding jurisdictions. We are now spending $1,000 less per child each year, in real dollars, than we were in 2008. The length and depth of that disinvestment in public education is unprecedented in at least the last half century in Fairfax County. We can not continue to balance budgets by raising class sizes and denying teachers raises. The people of Fairfax County are willing to support a great school system, but we must diversify the revenue base so that we are not always going back to homeowners for higher property taxes. Fairfax County should have a meals tax, at least partly dedicated to the schools. All elected officials representing Fairfax County must work together to restore the state's commitment to K-12 education. We must also work more effectively to attract new businesses to Fairfax County, including research institutions, an effort that relies in no small measure on the attraction of an excellent school system. Transparency School Board members represent the communityʼs wishes about our most important public resource: our schools. Formal School Board meetings and work sessions are not sufficient settings for those essential conversations between School Board members and constituents. The day-to-day work of being on the School Board is being out in the community, listening to parents, students, educators and other interested citizens, taking questions and suggestions, finding answers and making sure everyone has a chance to be heard. “Office hours” for School Board members should include shopping center sidewalks on Saturdays, after-school events and PTSA meetings, Sunday morning coffees, ice cream socials at community rooms, public engagement meetings on issues of wide interest, and easy accessibility by email and phone. Engaging in conversation on social media, like Facebook and Twitter, is also an increasingly powerful way to keep in touch with the community. Regular contact with other elected officials at the county, state and federal levels, builds the spirit of cooperation and support our schools need to excel. Ultimately, School Board members use their judgment in making tough decisions, but that judgment must be informed by the input of a respected, engaged electorate. Accountability Accountability in public education is essential. The community deserves to know that our schools are doing a great job. Our current system of accountability, built on high-stakes tests, is not worthy of our students. Fortunately, the policy conversation at the state and national levels is turning toward fewer, better measures of student achievement. As the President and leaders in Congress grapple with how to fix No Child Left Behind, the federal education law that is overdue for reform, we here in Fairfax County have been thinking about how we want to evaluate our own schools. Our loftiest goal for our children is not that they will pass a battery of multiple-choice tests at the end of this school year. On the contrary, we have important long-term goals for their success in college and the twenty-first century economy. The current School Board has worked with Superintendent Garza and the community to develop a "Portrait of a Graduate," describing those skills we want our students to have when they graduate so that we can empower our educators to teach and measure what matters. FCPS has also been well represented in state and national conversations about better measures of student achievement. We must not let the current political opportunity for reform pass without the voice of FCPS leading. Closing the Kindergarten Readiness Gap We have high expectations for every student, but some begin their school years already behind. The differences in reading and math readiness show up on the first day of kindergarten and take years to remedy. Research clearly shows that support in the preschool years pays for itself many times over throughout a child's school years and beyond into successful adulthood. We know how to create rich early environments for all children, but we're not doing as much as we can. In the last four years, the School Board has focused on coordinating with other public and private providers to expand existing efforts to meet our youngest children where they are - at home, in daycare or preschool - and give them the school-readiness support they need. The work has been too slow, however, and we must not lose focus on this most important investment. [8] |
” |
| —Pat Hynes, (2015), [9] | ||
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms 'Pat Hynes' 'Fairfax County Public Schools'. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
- Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia
- Fairfax County Public Schools elections (2015)
- Incumbency no guarantee of success in Nov. 3 school board elections (November 6, 2015)
- What happened in Nov.'s top board elections? (November 4, 2015)
External links
- Fairfax County Public Schools
- Office website
- Campaign website
- Pat Hynes on Twitter
- Campaign Facebook page
Footnotes
- ↑ Fairfax County Public Schools, "Hunter Mill District," accessed October 14, 2015
- ↑ Fairfax County Public Schools, "School Board: Overview," May 14, 2015
- ↑ Virginia State Board of Elections, "Campaign Finance Reports," accessed October 27, 2015
- ↑ Fairfax Democrats, "2015 Elections: Your Candidates," accessed October 9, 2015
- ↑ Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, "2015 FCFT School Board Candidate Endorsements," accessed October 9, 2015
- ↑ Inside NoVA, "Fairfax Education Association PAC makes political endorsements," September 10, 2015
- ↑ The Washington Post, "For Fairfax School Board," October 25, 2015
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Pat Hynes for School Board, "Issues," accessed October 14, 2015
