Brad Bradley is running for a seat on the Halifax County Schools Board of Education.
Professional
He is a plant engineer and maintenance manager and specializes in turning around problem production plants through implementing Lean Manufacturing and Six-Sigma concepts.
Why are you running?
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." — Edmund Burke.
Too many good men and women have done nothing and our failed school system is the result.
Why do you feel you are qualified to run?
No one present on the school board or running for school board is qualified and neither is our school superintendent. No one in our school system has experience in turning around a failed school system.
What we need to do is find someone that has turned around a failed school system, hire them and make them school superintendent, then back them in whatever decisions they make.
Do you support school merger? If so, please explain why. If not, please explain why?
The only thing that merging the schools systems would do is bring kids in the Roanoke Rapids and Weldon school systems down to the level of the Halifax County school system — the worst in the state.
I am a victim of such a failed merger of a school system and my grades dropped like a rock. I won’t do that to those kids.
How much will the merger cost the taxpayers of Halifax County? Please elaborate.
The merger would increase local funding by $680 per student into a failed school system by raising the sales tax or property tax, which would further cripple our local economy.
However, increasing local funding would also result in a loss in state and federal funding to the tune of $3,625 per student.
The merger is a huge financial step back for our school system.
What are the alternatives to merger? Would you support the sharing of resources with Weldon and Roanoke Rapids as an alternative to merger?
Find someone that has turned around a failed school system, hire them and make them school superintendent, and then let them decide what needs to be done and how to do it.
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel — all we have to do is copy success.
What are the immediate academic needs of students within the Halifax County School System? How do you go about seeing these needs are met?
According to the Halifax County School System report card on end of grade standardized tests from the NC Department of Education, our kids test scores are the worst in the state before they even get to 3rd grade and do not improve into 9th grade and beyond.
The problem is that our kids have not learned how to learn.
There are simple strategies and methods for learning how to learn; for example, I keep a yellow highlighter with me wherever I go so that I can make something important high profile. With strategies like these I went from making D’s & F’s in 9th grade to straight C’s in 10th grade to straight B’s in 11th grade to straight A’s in 12th grade.
What does the Halifax County School System have to do to regain the trust of the county commissioners?
Priority 1— Replace the School Board Chairperson and the School Superintendent.
When the captain sinks a ship he doesn’t get another four years to get it right — he gets removed immediately. Our school system is a ship wreck — a failure in management by the current School Board and a failure in leadership by the School Board Chairperson and the School Superintendent.
What are the biggest facility needs within the school system?
We need schools closer to where the kids and their parents live — parental involvement at a distance just doesn’t work and their involvement is critical.
How does the school system prevent the loss of students to the new KIPP Halifax school?
I would do just the opposite. I would encourage them to go to KIPP. If I could, I would build an express lane from the failed Halifax County School System to the KIPP Halifax Charter School so that parents can give their kids a better education.
At this moment, what is the financial picture of the county school system? What improvements need to be made?
According to NC Report Card from the NC Department of Education, combined local, state and federal funding for the Halifax County School System is $11,461 per student while the combined local, state and federal funding for the Roanoke Rapids School System is only $8,516 per student — in other words, the Halifax County School System gets $2,945 more per student than the Roanoke Rapids School System.
The Halifax County School Board and the School Superintendent are the architects of waste, fraud and financial abuse in doing less with more.
I wouldn't trust our school board and the school superintendent of the worst school system in the state with a potato gun, let alone the education of our kids.
