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Vincent Smith (Virginia)
From Ballotpedia
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Vincent Smith ran for election to the Virginia Beach City Public Schools to represent District 5. He lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Smith completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Vincent Smith was born in Virginia. He earned an associate degree from Northern Virginia Community College in 1992 and a bachelor's degree from Old Dominion University in 2010. His career experience includes working as a engineer.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Virginia Beach City Public Schools, Virginia, elections (2024)
General election
General election for Virginia Beach City Public Schools, District 5
Melinda Rogers defeated Vincent Smith in the general election for Virginia Beach City Public Schools, District 5 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Melinda Rogers (Nonpartisan)  | 54.1 | 10,964 |
 | Vincent Smith (Nonpartisan) | 45.3 | 9,177 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.5 | 111 | ||
| Total votes: 20,252 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Smith in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Vincent Smith completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Smith's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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Born in Hampton and raised in WV and NoVa I find myself today the lucky husband of an immigrant teacher, father to two great children, and immersed in efforts to give back to my community. Hi, I'm Vincent Smith. I am an engineer with 25+ years experience in delivering quality Capital Improvement Projects at the local, state and federal levels. Before that I worked on tunneling and deep excavation projects all over the world and a successful business owner. My wife and I volunteer our time each summer at a Rural Mixta school in Guatemala. It is a humbling experience that shows me how well public education can work when it's not fettered by the issues that we deal with in the US in today's world. My background, knowledge, skills, a experience makes me the strongest choice for the District 5 School Board Seat in Virginia Beach!
I like to write in my spare time and have two manuscripts in their editing phase that I will publish over the next few years. I also have an affinity for making wooden furnishings by hand. Many of my tools are over a century old and some were handed down through my family for generations. I am also an accomplished semi-professional photographer. In what little spare time I have left I am learning HAM radio communications. I believe we have great schools in Virginia Beach and I'm asking you to choose me for Virginia Beach School Board in District 5 to ensure they stay that way.
- While VBCPS' reading scores are higher than the national average I do not think we should rest on shriveling laurels saying, "We're not as bad as others". We should be striving to do much better. By VBCPS' own statistics, 30% of our 3rd graders are not reading at 3rd grade level. Written communication is a cornerstone of human civilization. Children who can't read at grade level will struggle to learn at grade level. Frustration leads to discontent and acting out disrupting classrooms thus affecting others' access to education. We should be prioritizing resources to get that number much, much lower.
- Our teachers need more support and we need to ensure that Virginia Beach is the pinnacle of the area's teaching experience. We can do that by ensuring our teachers have full support of administration. We also must free them from the non-teaching responsibilities that take their focus away from teaching. We can also create a system that fosters orderly classrooms. That will relieve teachers' stress and give all students easy access to a solid education.
- The bigger, and long-term challenge we face is infrastructure. We have 86 school buildings with an average age over 40. These buildings are aging much faster than we are dealing with this issue. 31 of these buildings (36%) are over 50 years old. Only 12 of these have been modernized since 2001 leaving 19 in need of replacement or modernization immediately. Bear in mind that these buildings are really meant to last about 50 to 60 years on the outside, and four are over 60 years old without modernization. This will be VBCPS' heaviest lift over the next decade. There are solutions, but they will not be painless and I propose this requires participation from the City, likely outside of the limits of the revenue sharing formula.
Education, long term fiscal responsibility and stability, and ensuring the stability of Constitutional rights.
I have an innate ability to sort thru the fluff and get to the root of large amounts of data or intricate issues. My experience writing and editing engineering specifications and government policy will be invaluable to the Virginia Beach School Board.
If I can increase our reading rate to less than 15% reading lower than grade level I will feel successful.
The Space Shuttle Challenger explosion when I was 15. My father had been a Nasa engineer when I was born and was a developer of the Apollo capsules' heat shields. I had always had a love of space exploration and this hit me hard. It was the first time I was aware of loss of life in the pursuit of knowledge.
I delivered newspapers from the age of 11 to 15 then got a position as a draftsman while in high school. I worked for Prince William County Schools for a while then took a position drafting at a land surveying firm thru the end of high school. I used the money I saved from these jobs to pay for flight school and soloed on my 16th birthday.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I first read it when I was maybe seven. Verne and Nemo opened my mind to a world of exploration and imagination. Nemo taught me that one can invent things that the world hasn't yet seen. And Verne showed me that reading is an avenue to the mind and inspired me to write myself.
My wife and my mom will both tell you that we engineers are a hard bunch to understand as people. We just have a different way of thinking and viewing things. About a decade ago I realized that I needed to work on my people skills and get away from the analytical personality so many of us engineers exude. I have worked hard, and purposefully at it and feel I have done well at it.
To listen to, and represent the constituency in a manner reflective of their campaign. A School Board member must also serve the needs of the division within the limits of federal, state, and local restrictions.
All constituents have a voice regardless of agreement. I will always listen to, and consider, all viewpoints on the issues in front of the School Board. When elected I will represent the needs of students, staff, parents, VBCPS, taxpayers, and all stakeholders in our education system. Proper education is a huge team effort. I often stress to people I mentor that as you climb the management chain it becomes more and more important to listen than it is to speak.
Teaching of late has become too prescriptive and test-focused. We have hired teachers to teach and we should give them more leeway into how they do so. But we should also have a teaming and mentoring environment of results-driven culture where accountability is a partner.
I would like to see increased access to advanced vocational training. And not just at one location, each high school should have such a program and facilities. We should develop a program to graduate apprentice tradesmen and offer industry certifications that translate to career entry job offers before graduation.
In Virginia Beach we have a revenue-sharing formula to divide revenues with the City. I believe each year's budget cycle processes should include a review of the formula to ensure it is appropriate for that year's revenues and economic conditions. VBCPS should not continue to rely on the reversion process to find funding for either needed or wanted programs. If those programs were necessary, they should be in the budget from day one. If not, those reversion funds should be returned directly to the taxpayers, not to the City coffers.
We must ensure access to appropriate and adequate support for mental health, within the limits of parental notification and direction.
The Republican Party of Virginia Beach, Students First, Sen. Bill DeSteph, Sen. Christie New Craig, Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer
An orderly classroom composed of mutual respect where the students are appropriately challenged, supported, and encouraged to succeed.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on August 13, 2024
