JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A new face will take over for the District 7 school board seat following the August 20 election. Current school board member, Lori Hershey, reached her term limit this year and now two people are hoping to take her place.
Melody Bolduc and Sarah Mannion are the names voters will find on their ballots.
Bolduc has been a teacher for 24 years. For twelve of those years, she taught for Duval County schools. Now she teaches privately for students who have left the public school system.
WATCH: Full interview with Duval County District 7 School Board Candidate Melody Bolduc
“Many of them, not all, but many have processing disorders, are on the spectrum, and I’m able to meet needs that our county was not able to meet,” Bolduc said. “Whether it was because they had to go through the rigmarole of the RTI, the response intervention process in order to get a diagnosis, or because, you know, the teachers were just too and our teachers are incredible, it’s not that our teachers aren’t good enough to do it. It’s that you can only expect people to do so much with a large group of children. You can’t individualize instruction with more than 15 students.”
Sarah Mannion is a bankruptcy and real estate attorney. She’s also a parent to three kids who are either entering or have graduated from Duval County Schools.
“Right now in our county, we’re facing, you know, a lot of challenges. First and foremost, our budget problems, and I think that our school board needs, you know, a diverse set of skills to tackle these problems. And so I think that my set of skills, being a bankruptcy and real estate attorney and having, you know, leadership experience on governing boards is very beneficial, and is a skill that our school board could need right now,” Mannion said.
WATCH: Full interview with Duval County District 7 School Board candidate Sarah Mannion
Bolduc’s three platform points include focusing on the budget and spending. She also wants to be an active board member that educates the public about what’s going on with the school board, and she wants more transparency.
“I’m not only for teachers or only for children or only for parents, it’s I am for all of our stakeholders working together. I’m running on a platform of we need to support teachers,” Bolduc said. “We need to have parents as involved as possible in the process, because we need parent support, and children who have parent support do better in school. And we have to listen to our teachers, listen to our administrators, and be honest about our problems as a district so that we can fix it because if we are not honest about problems, we don’t acknowledge them; we can’t address them.”
Mannion’s three platform points include fiscal responsibility, retaining and supporting teachers, and prioritizing the safety and security of students.
“That is not just keeping outside threats out of school and ensuring that our students are safe because those are my kids in that building, and everybody’s kids, and we want to make sure that they’re okay,” Mannion said. “But also when we look at student safety, it is mental health and ensuring that there is adequate access to mental health resources to our students, and also ensuring that when there are disciplinary problems, that we are not only dealing with them in an appropriate manner but also working with the student and their family to figure out, why is the student having these problems? What resources are there that can help them?”
Early voting in Duval County is going on now until August 18. Election Day is August 20. You can read more about the school board elections along with all of our local elections in our News4JAX Voter’s Guide.