- March 14, 2025
Sue Dickinson
AGE: 57
FAMILY: divorced, 3 children
QUIRKY FACT: Scrapbooking supplies hoarder
BIO: Sue Dickinson was a school nurse for 18.5 years in the Flagler school system. She has been on the Flagler County School Board for the past 12 years and is a certified School Board Member with the Florida School Board Association. She completed the FSBA Master Board training in 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2011. She was endorsed by the Flagler County Association of Realtors. Her community involvement includes the Flagler Auditorium Governing Board, The Education Foundation Board of Directors, The Flagler County Chamber of Commerce and the Family Life Center. She was the county coordinator for Flagler County Girl Scouts for 19 years and the Flagler County Youth Activities for 12 years.
What is your attitude towards high-stakes testing?
I’m not in favor of high-stakes testing at all. I’m not in favor of the number of tests that we ask our kids to take on an annual basis. This year, as you know, the cut scores came in to us and the scores dropped significantly for the students. That’s devastating to those kids. We weren’t prepared for that; therefore, we couldn’t get them prepared for it. So we’re going to have to do some kind of remediation for the children who scored low in order to get them up to where we need to get them.
What can be done to reduce the School Board budget?
I think there are a lot of places where we could still become creative. Every year, we ask the principals to take this percentage out of your budget because the state’s not giving it to us, and all of a sudden they find it.
So where exactly do I think it could come from? Well, if the price of gas would go down, that would help us immensely, and of course that’s not going to happen.
I think we can control the temperature in the schools better so that it’s not so cold and our power bills can go down. But overall, I’m not sure where we have any money to cut right now. Yes, we could move Phoenix Academy if we had to, that would save us some dollars. If we move Phoenix Academy, then we could move Everest into the building where they are and that could definitely give us some cost savings. I think we’re a little disappointed in Phoenix, that it didn’t take off as well as we wanted it to. The number of students were certainly not recruited, so consequently we’ve got a very low number in there. That by itself would be a huge cost savings.
Being as the board has always said “We promise to keep it there three years,” if we had to go somewhere, that would probably be the next place.
What the biggest challenge facing the School Board in the next four years?
No. 1 thing for us to do right now is pass the half-penny sales tax. If we don’t pass that on Aug. 15, we’re going to be sitting in the board room cutting $4 million. We don’t have $4 million to cut, so that’s going to be our No. 1.
No. 2, as a board member, I’m supposed to balance the budget with 5% overall; of course, that would be my next goal. And then we get into academic achievement, and we’re meeting some very, very difficult times with academic achievement. With the new legislation that all children have to pass algebra, geometry and chemistry in order to graduate, I am fearful that we’re going to have a huge amount of dropouts, because there’s children out there just above the score where they get cut off and there’s no way they’re going to pass those classes, so remediation’s going to have to be huge with those children. I’m not real sure we can do it, but I’m sure we’re going to give it a try, and we’re going to give it our best try.
I’d like to see us do some schools within schools, because our schools are so big. I’d like to see us go ahead and, like the Phoenix school, do another thing like that in a school building. Of course, they’re in uniforms or glorified dress code. So that portion of it wouldn’t really matter, and we could certainly find space. And I think that that’s probably going to be our next step: to try to find ways to make our school buildings smaller when we can’t remove any children. So, try to make it feel smaller.
And then I think that the curveball that we’re thrown is our economic times. Trying to educate children that don’t know where they’re going to sleep tonight when they leave us — imagine sleeping in the woods for the last three nights. That wouldn’t have been a very pleasant experience. And I think that, unfortunately, that number is growing for Flagler County. More and more students are becoming transient, and I don’t know exactly what we can do about that. I know we can feed them once we get them and we can certainly clothe them if we have to, off The S.T.U.F.F. Bus. I’m not sure exactly what we can do with that one, but I only see that continuing to get greater than what it is now.
What is your vision for Flagler County schools in the next four years?
I would like to see us continue to be able to be technologically sound as we are today.
Our children have to know how to utilize all these new gadgets that everybody keeps putting out, because that’s what they’re going to be working with. They’re not going to be working with a computer like we are, and all of the above. So I believe that we need to keep our children with technology as best as we can, and I think that would be my No. 1 goal because financially, that’s going to be tough. And if they don’t have technology behind them, they’re not going to be successful in the work world. Believe me, if I had to work off a computer all day, every day, it wouldn’t be a good thing.
