- November 17, 2024
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Janet McDonald has spent her career in education, as a classroom teacher and an educational consultant, working with “anybody who has been identified as ‘having difficulties,’” she said.
“My goal is to provide appropriate instruction and an awareness of what we need to do differently at the local level,” she said. “It’s not just those five members of the board making decisions; they should just be voices for the community.”
Dr. Helena Nitowski, principal of an elementary school in Connecticut,said McDonald had worked for her for four years as a language arts specialist.
“She’s passionate about doing the right thing for the kids,” Nitowski said. “She kind of looks at the whole child, which I think sometimes in education we get too focused on the academics, and we forget that we’re dealing with a little person.”
As a leader, Nitowski said, McDonald will, “even if someone doesn’t agree or wants to try a different way, she’ll try to help them move along without being pushy or without in any way making their work seem insignificant. She tries to meet people as they are, and move them forward from there, rather than expecting everybody to be at the same place.”
McDonald has been vocally critical of Common Core standards — which Florida is not using — and the Florida Standards, which the state devised as a replacement for Common Core, and which McDonald said she has researched and believes to be very close to Common Core. McDonald is married to Dennis McDonald, a former County Commission candidate.
Priorities and successes
McDonald would like to see changes to make the board more transparent and easier for parents to become involved with, such as a two-weekwindow between workshops and votes on the subject being workshopped.
The fact that parents showed up at the recent State of Education address to tell the district about the inclusion program — and by that point many were deeply frustrated — showed that their concerns hadn’t
been heard by the district when they should have, she said. “I don’t think that anyone needs to get to that point,” she said. “I think there needs to be a much more open communication link.”
She also said she felt like students, younger ones in particular, were getting too much homework. “I’ve talked to parents who spend two, three, four hours on homework,” she said. “And that’s out of line for elementary school children.”
But she didn’t think the district necessarily needs more money to begin making changes.
“I think we have enough there,” she said. “I think we need to look at where the money’s going.” In particular, she said, she’d want to examine the number of district staff who don’t have direct contact with children, people who create materials but aren’t actually in the classroom.
And she’s not convinced of the use of the 1:1 program that puts laptops or tablets in students’ hands, she said, in part because she’s concerned about the number of hours they’re spending in front of a computer screen.
Students also learn differently when they’re reading on screen than they do when they’re reading a book, she said. “They don’t know what they’re thinking and taking in is not what they’re supposed to be taking in,” she said. And she said she worried about radiation from
school Wi-Fi networks.
A sensitive person can “just feel this real push down. … There is no real safe WiFi,” she said. “We have microwave radiation ramped up in all those schools.”
The idea that WiFi causes dangerous radiation is disputed; several scientists’ responses on the University of California, Santa Barbara’s ScienceLine website, answering a parent’s concern, called Wi-Fi harmless.
But McDonald said David Wolfe, whose website describes him as a “health, eco, nutrition, and natural beauty expert,” has championed a movement called “grounding” or “earthing,” in which people dissipate what they consider harmful radiation from sources like Wi-Fi through contact with the ground, such as by walking barefoot. She said she doesn’t think students are grounding enough for the amount of time
they’re spending with the technology.
Arts and academics
McDonald said arts education is critical for children’s development, and needs to be part of the school experience.
'“Arts feed the brain,” she said. “It’s not fluff,” and is as valuable or more valuable for some kids than academics, she said.
She was more critical of the district’s IB program at FPC, which she called “another copyright program that’s not under the purview of the School Board,” and comes at a “premium price.”
She expressed concern that IB, and AP, programs are taking students “narrower and deeper” instead of helping them develop a broader perspective.
She said she would like to see evaluations of both programs.
Leadership, weaknesses and strengths
McDonald described herself as a “book addict” who is passionate about education, “about individuals becoming all that they can be.”
As far as personal weaknesses, she said, “I talk too much,” and tend to explore numerous options, something she said could be seen as a liability for “people who like one answer for everyone.” “Maybe I’m a
Pollyana,” she said. “I think if we don’t have a solution, we haven’t searched enough for it.”
Contrasting herself to opponent John Fischer, she said, “I think that we are both very supportive of good education … but my goal is to focus on the kids who may be marginalized by the system, and I think that maybe he doesn’t have the knowledge, when he makes policy, of how that affects those students. … If you don’t know your clients that this is going to be imposed on, it may not be a fit.”
Previous press coverage of Janet McDonald:
Click here to view previous Palm Coast Observer stories about Janet McDonald, here to view FlaglerLive stories and here to view Daytona Beach News-Journal stories.
