Seven candidates for two Mesa Public Schools governing board seats have filed signatures to be on the ballot at the Nov. 8 election.
According to the Maricopa County school superintendent’s website, the candidates are: Ray Deer, Chris Hamlet, Marcie Hutchinson, Jacob Martinez, Ed Steele, Rachel Walden and J. R. Wright.
MPS is the largest public school district in Arizona and has six high schools, nine junior high schools, 50 elementary schools and 17 choice and success schools.
As the election nears, the Independent is conducting Q&As with each candidate to get their opinions on various topics.
In this, the third in the Q&A series, we ask candidates, “What do you believe are the three most important issues facing Mesa Unified School District — please describe the approach you would take to solve each of these issues if elected?”
As the election gets closer, keep an eye on yourvalley.net/mesa-independent and the print edition of the Mesa Independent for more from the Q&A series.
For the following, candidates Jacob Martinez and Ed Steele didn’t respond to emails.
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Marcie Hutchinson
Marcie Hutchinson, 68, is a retired teacher from Mesa Public Schools (28 years); and a retired director of K-12 Initiatives, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at ASU (seven years). She has a bachelor of arts degree in secondary education from State University of New York at Oswego; and a master of arts degree in history from Arizona State University.
What do you believe are the three most important issues facing Mesa Unified School District? Please describe the approach you would take to solve each of these issues if elected.
No. 1: Funding. We cannot recruit and retain the teachers, administrators, counselors, psychologists, bus drivers, food and nutrition workers, custodians, technicians; all the personnel needed to serve our students without proper funding. I am committed to continue working tirelessly with government officials, businesses, nonprofits, and educational organizations to secure long-term and sustainable state funding to attract and retain the best teachers, support staff, and administrators to educate our kids and help our community thrive. Our successful budget increase passed by Mesa voters in 2019 demonstrates the commitment of our community to Mesa Public Schools.
No. 2: Increase the percent of students who are proficient in grade-level standards:
Adoption of new instructional materials in English language arts and math;
Training of teachers in phonics and the fundamentals of reading instruction;
Site-based instructional coaches to provide support;
Professional development focused on literacy strategies for all content teachers;
Increase student agency in reading selections to tap into student natural curiosity; and
Community literacy initiatives like Feed to Read where over 10,000 books were distributed to 16 neighborhood schools during lunch at summer school.
No. 3: Student and staff wellness:
School counselor in every elementary school;
Social workers to provide support to students and their families;
Partnerships with community mental health organizations; and
Teacher and staff training to recognize mental health issues.
Note: these actions have been taken while I have been on the governing board.
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Rachel Walden
Rachel Walden is currently a homemaker and volunteer, but her previous career was at Vanguard where she managed the institutional business for some of the largest and most recognizable employers in the country. She attended Mesa Public Schools and graduated from Mesa High School. She went to ASU for both a bachelor’s degree and graduate school.
What do you believe are the three most important issues facing Mesa Unified School District? Please describe the approach you would take to solve each of these issues if elected.
No. 1: Learning loss and/or students not performing at the expectation for their assigned grade. We are losing our community’s future if we do not act quickly to increase student development in math skills and English language arts. These two areas are the primary drivers of all future learning. We must get an in-person tutoring program start as soon as possible. Research shows that students prefer in-person learning to online learning, and research also indicates that you can be up to 80% more likely to remember information if you can discuss it.
We should be able to find an opportunity to partner with a college to provide a tutoring program. Many degrees now require internships or community service in order to graduate. With collaboration we could find a way to fulfill our district needs but also help older students achieve real world experience for their resumes or college requirements.
No. 2: Teacher retention and new teachers. The district made the decision to raise the starting salary of new teachers so it is the highest in the state. This will certainly bring teachers to Mesa. But to retain teachers, new or not, we must reduce the many tasks placed on them. We also can help our teachers be more engaged by letting them develop their own goals for their pay for performance.
No. 3: We need more data-driven analytics on how time and resources are used if we are truly going to gain efficiencies and help teachers find more classroom time to actually teach. Teachers and other staff should have the opportunity to document time that is spent doing things outside of their contractual obligations. The more data the district has the more we can figure out where funding should be spent or not spent. For example, if a teacher loses half the day dealing with behavioral issues instead of teaching, how and where is that learning loss documented, and how does the budget solve that problem? We need to be able to drill down to the root causes of inefficiencies and teacher burdens but this can only be done with data.
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J.R. Wright
J.R. Wright, 49, owns Larry John Wright Advertising. He has a bachelor of arts degree in communication and an MBA from Arizona State University.
What do you believe are the three most important issues facing Mesa Unified School District? Please describe the approach you would take to solve each of these issues if elected.
No. 1: I believe our biggest challenge and opportunity is to raise our students to the level of the technology and ever-changing job market that our economy will demand now and in the future. Both students and teachers must adapt to the more advanced landscape of what lies ahead of us. As a board member, I would look at expanding our existing partnerships in technology, career and technical training that give our students a variety of options. This will allow our students to more quickly identify what they would like to do and hit the ground running while in school and upon graduation.
No. 2: Along with the first challenge, the second challenge will be to utilize the budget and allocate it to the most effective methods to achieve these goals and standards. We can’t continue to do things the way they were done in the past. And we can’t lose the public’s trust as we will continue to need their support. My business background makes me uniquely qualified to evaluate and use our resources in the best and most strategic way possible without waste.
No. 3: Ensuring that all students have a safe and accepting place to come and learn to express themselves and develop into the students and citizens that we need them to become. I would favor expanding technology and increased investment to making sure our schools are physically safe. In addition, students’ emotional needs have changed. We need to provide additional resources so that administration and teachers receive necessary training on the ever changing social and emotional needs of kids. They face different challenges and hurdles than we faced and have different emotional needs. I would promote having a culture in each school of acceptance and mentorship.
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Ray Deer
Ray Deer, 49, is an associate judge for the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, presiding primarily over civil court and civil family court.
He has a bachelor of arts degree in political science from California State University at Long Beach; and a master of arts degree in education from National University.
He is on Facebook at Ray Deer for Mesa Unified School District Governing Board 2022.
What do you believe are the three most important issues facing Mesa Unified School District? Please describe the approach you would take to solve each of these issues if elected.
Issue No. 1: I believe one important issue facing Mesa Unified School District is school safety. As an educator and a judge who has presided over family matters, I know that children thrive in a safe environment. In such an environment, children are able to concentrate and work on skills in an uninterrupted fashion. School safety is all encompassing, that is, students must be in a safe environment among their fellow students and away from danger from outside intruders. The solution is to ensure that all teachers are properly trained in classroom management skills with the support of school administration. Fights within the school are unacceptable. There must be accountability at all levels within the school district. Every school site must be a learning environment with a stakeholders involved in assuring that school safety is a priority. Proper training must be emphasized at the administrative level, with teachers in the classroom and with school personnel throughout the campus.
Issue No 2: Educators and all stakeholders within a school district must provide a predictable environment, one that has awards and consequences. The awards must be consistent, and the consequences must be fair and just with room for the student to take corrective measures for improvement. Again, the solution would be proper training for all school personnel with follow up by district personnel. Accountability would be a key component to ensure that such a predictable environment is being implemented.
Issue No. 3: Up-to-date resources for all students and staff. This would include the latest technology for students to be successful, proper equipment and supplies for teachers, effective equipment for school security, and clean and modern facilities for students. Students should be in a proper learning environment with the latest resources. This would require a strict overview of the budget and to see how this proposal can be implemented.
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Chris Hamlet
Chris Hamlet, 47, is a contract courier. He is an Arizona native, born in Phoenix and raised in Globe. He left Globe at 18 years old and spent five-plus years out-of-state serving in the U.S. Army as an airborne medic and orthopedic specialist. Once back in Arizona after service, he moved around the west valley for a few years until he permanently moved to Mesa in 2005 and has been in the district for 17 years now.
He has an associate degree of applied science in electronics and computer technology from DeVry University; and a bachelor of science degree in technical management from DeVry University.
What do you believe are the three most important issues facing Mesa Unified School District? Please describe the approach you would take to solve each of these issues if elected:
Hyper-sexualization of our children has to be first on the list. Some may not agree that this one is a priority, but since it is the most morally corrupt of the current issues that adversely affect our children, it must be dealt with accordingly. Recently, a transgender support plan that bypassed the board was introduced by MPS legal and superintendency that would allow children to shower in the locker room of the gender they identify with. I asked the board during public comment on Aug. 23 to show me one parent that would be OK with their daughter having male genitalia in her face while her and that boy that identifies as a girl get ready to shower together in the locker room, just one parent of a daughter who would accept that. If the parents of all the daughters in the district are against that particular issue, then it is the Governing Board’s duty to eliminate the guideline altogether and create a policy/process that would not allow superintendency and legal to implement any such guidelines without board approval moving forward. Also, dress codes are diminished from previous years in the name of inclusivity and equity and the power to supplement them on a per-campus basis has been stripped from the School Improvement Advisory Committees and school administrators. After speaking with actual Mesa Public Schools teachers on the campaign trail, it is my understanding that some MPS personnel are told not to enforce the dress code at all. Some do not enforce the current dress code out of fear of the woke-mob, they just don’t want to “deal with it.” I would work to get that dress code reverted back to the 2015 revision that was acceptable and enforced well across MPS. Or, at the very least, find a way to get the current MPS dress code revised to give supplemental authority back to respective school administrators and SIACs so they may decide what is appropriate for their own children. Teachers need to be empowered and encouraged to enforce a set dress code as opposed to told not to enforce one at all, thereby, unwillingly contributing to the demoralization of our children.
Curriculum is a huge issue, in fact, I have seen from previous years that this issue still remains the same and was even mentioned by other candidates in the last school board election, nothing has changed for the better academically. Arizona is the armpit of the education system, always ranking in the bottom few, consistently, for years. Our children are being dumbed-down by the minute as their days are filled with useless assessments and risk screeners and they are taught to think with their emotions instead of their brains. Over the years, common sense curriculum like cursive handwriting gets replaced with things such as social emotional learning and equity in science classes. Critical race theory components that teach that we must recognize inequity and bias in ourselves is being ushered in by the MPS Portrait of a Graduate. The theory of evolution is taught as the only acceptable explanation of human life in life science classes. All dissenting views, especially religious views of human existence, have been silenced; it’s pure indoctrination. I will push the idea of a combination of 1776 and STEM curriculums with the intent to replace all critical race theory, SEL and SAEBRS components that do nothing but keep our children dumbed-down, robbing them of a proper education.
Another major issue, but definitely not last, is that key stakeholders have no voice. The parents and the few great teachers left teaching our children have no say in the way that our own children are taught and what is best for them academically. There are teachers in MPS that just want to do their jobs; teach children, and not have to be concerned with all of this political polarization in the classroom. Some teachers are quite literally forced to push the garbage curriculum coming from the DOE against their will and are immediately silenced when they point out how terribly useless some of the curriculum is. The parents and children have no voice as well. I have witnessed both parents and children pouring their hearts out on topics such as masking and special education in school board meetings, and being the majority in the room, not to mention the biggest stakeholders, they were still ignored and pushed aside as if what they said was inconsequential. I will be a voice for the teachers, the parents and the students that did not even know they needed a voice. We must work with parents by giving them a platform to speak and interact with the governing board. The monthly board meeting rules need to be changed to allow some majority rule in the room to get hot topics expedited and addressed appropriately.
Richard Dyer Managing Editor | East Valley @RHDyer
Meet Richard Richard Dyer has worked at Independent Newsmedia Inc. USA since 1987, starting his career in Apache Junction as a copy editor and being promoted over the years to work as the editor of the Mesa Independent, news services editor for the East Valley office in Apache Junction, managing editor for the East Valley office, news services editor for the East Valley office and eventually also for the newspapers at INI’s then-Chandler office, managing editor again and as a news editor covering Apache Junction/Gold Canyon and Queen Creek. He helped start the Florence Independent while the news editor covering Apache Junction and Mesa news. In January 2023, he became associate managing editor for the East Valley newspapers and in August 2023 became managing editor for the East Valley newspapers of Chandler/Tempe, Gilbert, Queen Creek, Florence, Mesa and Apache Junction/Gold Canyon, while also reporting on Mesa and Apache Junction/Gold Canyon.
Community: Since 2009, he has worked as a volunteer to design The Blue Guitar Magazine, Blue Guitar Jr. magazine and Unstrung magazine, which are projects of The Arizona Consortium for the Arts; and since 2014, has been overseeing the art submissions.
Education: University of Arizona with a master of arts in journalism and a bachelor of science in agricultural communication. Also continuing education at Mesa Community College in welding in a metal art sculpture class.
Random fact: Saw his first tornado on May 31, 2010, which was classified as an EF-2, as part of a stormchasing tour group.
Hobbies: He is an artist of welded-steel sculptures, selling his artwork at juried and non-juried art shows.
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