Two Leon County Schools veterans and a new-to-politics parents’ rights advocate are vying to fill the vacant District 4 seat for the Leon County School Board.
District 4 was represented by Dee Dee Rasmussen for 14 years until she stepped down in the middle of her fourth term to focus on her health and family.
Digging deeper into the race:
That provided an opening for Laurie Cox, who was already gearing up for a run in 2024 and had built up a substantial campaign war chest.
Cox has worked for the district for 33 years as a physical education teacher. Rounding out the race is Alex Stemle, a former teacher and now assistant principal at Godby High School, and Susan Hodges, a parent who is concerned about the district’s instructional materials.
All three answered questions during a candidate forum organized by the Tallahassee Democrat, WFSU and the League of Women Voters.
Stemle touts himself as the only candidate who has worked at the elementary, middle and high school levels.
“This is not about who you go to church with or who your husband is and how influential he is as assistant superintendent, I think this is about who can be objective when making decisions on our school district and on our school board,” he said.
Cox is married to Alan Cox, an assistant superintendent at the district whose family has been involved in public education in the county for decades.
“I’ve worked in this district for 33 years, and I think one of the things that I can bring to the table is bringing all people together and coming to consensus,” she said.
Hodges, who doesn’t have any public education experience, said: “My heart is for the children, my heart is to improve the school system and my heart is for the Lord and to bring his word back into the school system, because that is what we’re missing.”
During the forum, two of the candidates said they were skeptical of the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“Yes and no,” Cox said when asked if she had confidence in the outcome in the race in which Joe Biden beat incumbent Donald Trump. “I think it has been uncovered, some of the voting discrepancies throughout the nation.” Hodges also said no.
Stemle, who ran against Rasmussen in 2020, was the only candidate in the District 4 race to unequivocally agree with the election results.
At the forum, the three candidates also answered questions about parents’ rights, the LGBTQ+ guide and learning loss due to COVID 19.
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Laurie Cox: We do have some issues in our county, we also do a lot of great things. We do a lot of things right. I think after COVID, we are seeing a lot of challenges not just in Leon County, but around the state, around the world, actually. That has brought to light some behavioral issues, some learning losses that definitely need to be addressed. I think one of the ways that we can combat that is by transparency and communication. When we open the lines of communication to all of our stakeholders, teachers feel like they have an input, parents have an input, administration, support staff, then we can start to address these issues that we’ve seen really come to light.
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Susan Hodges: Not being in the actual school itself but knowing some of the things that are going on, I would say that the Guardian program needs to be improved upon because I believe the safety of the children needs to come first. We need to make sure that we improve on that so that if anything happens, they are completely protected.
Alex Stemle: The number one priority in our school district is student learning and engagement in our classrooms. When our kids left for the pandemic and returned, they came back very different. Some of them were confused and angry. We experienced a lot of learning loss. And I think that it’s important that we notice the trauma that they also have. Student learning and engagement is the number one priority, and the way that we improve that is through opening up communication channels from the top to the bottom and connecting the board priorities with what’s going on in our classrooms and the needs that are in our classes.
Laurie Cox: My husband was the one that presented that before the board, and it was amazing to see two very opposite extremes being able to come together to complete a guide. At first, personally, I was not sure that we needed one. I was surprised when I found out that Leon County Schools even had one, but knowing that administrators and teachers when they’re faced with students that… there needed to be some guidance. I was good with that. Now, the question was the provision for parent notification, parents should be notified in these situations. We want to make sure the student is safe, but absolutely parents should be notified.
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Susan Hodges: I believe parents should be notified. I don’t believe that what they have stated in the guideline saying that they had a conversation… I believe that everything about the children needs to be to the parents awareness. The parents are the ones raising the children. The school is the one that is educating them, but there needs to be limits in their education.
Alex Stemle: Parental rights is the law of the land, and so we will follow that. One of the issues that I’ve come to realize is that our schools don’t use our locker rooms anymore since COVID. We spent a lot of time discussing this. One of the things that we need to make sure that we do is we don’t step on the rights of all for to protect some. I would have loved to seen those hundreds of hours of our community put back into literacy gains and how we can address reading and give the teachers a guide on how we can improve reading and learning in our classrooms. A lot of times we just need to be careful with what types of things we focus our efforts on.
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Susan Hodges: I don’t believe the school should be involved in any of that. I don’t believe the school should be involved in telling children that they can be male or female or anything like that. That’s not their business. It’s up to the parent. As for race, I’m not really sure what the issues are at the moment. I know that there is some bullying going on, but my understanding was that was more for the (LGBTQ+) guideline issues, and that was why that was put in place. I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with any race issues at the moment. So if anyone could enlighten me, that would be great.
Alex Stemle: Our teachers, they teach the department of education standards. I think it’s important for our public to know that, in my opinion, and what I’ve seen, we don’t have (teachers) that are teaching on topics that are not age appropriate in our schools here in Leon County. We don’t have first grade teacher teaching about gender identity, I think that’s important for our public to know. Kids are very creative, and they want to get to know their teachers, and they want to learn about our teachers. We got to make sure our teachers have the skills to pivot from those conversations and get back to learning and get back to the core content knowledge. I think it’s important that our kids leave our school district prepared adults that they have the content knowledge and the civic responsibilities to go and lead our future. It’s important that we control our narrative as well. As a school board member, that will be one of my priorities. I think that if we don’t control our narrative of what’s happening in our schools, somebody else is. The flagpole issues are also hard for me to digest as a school administrator.
Laurie Cox: I don’t believe our classrooms should be billboards for personal, social or political activism. I’ve worked work with the department of education helping to write standards, and I know the process that goes into that. We’ve got standards that our teachers do teach, and I will tell you, no teacher that I’ve talked to is indoctrinating students, necessarily. But we do want to protect against personal biases coming into the classroom, and we want to make sure our teachers are teaching the standards that the department of education has put before them. We also just want to make sure our teachers are treated as professionals, the professional that they are. Building relationships with students is critical. I’ve built my career on building relationships with not only teachers but with students, and that’s crucial in the classroom — having a rigorous curriculum, but also building relationships. Those two go hand in hand.
Contact Ana Goñi-Lessan at AGoniLessan@tallahassee.com and follow her on Twitter @goni_lessan.
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