Four run for seat in Senate
Education, FCAT two major items on agendas for District 14 position

By Fred Hiers/ Ocala Star-Banner

OCALA - Four candidates have thrown their political hats into the Florida Senate District 14 ring.

All four men say education is one of the issues they would focus on if elected in November, but their plans for the Legislature's role in educating students vary.

District 14 includes north Marion County and 28,028 registered Marion County voters. Florida Sen. Rod Smith is not seeking re-election but instead running for governor. Those running include Democratic candidates Ed Jennings Jr. and Perry McGriff and Republican candidates, Travis Horn and Steve Oelrich.

McGriff, a Gainesville State Farm insurance agency owner, said the Legislature should give local school boards more autonomy over state education money and local school curriculum.

"You can't paint everyone with the same brush. Everyone is different," McGriff said. "That's why local school boards must have local control."

McGriff, 68, also said the state has put too much emphasis on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and that the testing scheme should not be pushed as aggressively as it has been.

"There's nothing wrong with testing but the FCAT has become the curriculum instead of a way to test students," he said.

He wants the Legislature to allow teachers the freedom to teach rather than focus solely on preparing students to perform well on the FCAT.

The FCAT is administered to students in grades three through 11 and is used to rate the performance of individual schools. High scoring schools or those that improve since the previous year are awarded more money from the state.

McGriff, a Democrat, was a Florida House representative from 2000-2002 but was not re-elected when much of his district was redrawn. While in the House, he served on the Education Appropriation Commission. He also served on the Gainesville City Commission from 1968-1971 and on the Alachua County Commission from 1974-1980.

McGriff said that if elected he would urge fellow lawmakers to earmark more money to pay for teaching students not bound for college a trade while still in high school.

As for colleges, McGriff said he would support additional money for Florida's colleges but that some of the increased funding might have to come from hiking tuition fees, adding Florida's colleges still charged students relatively low tuition rates compared to most other states.

Horn said if he were elected the the Senate he would encourage parents to play a greater role in their children's education.

Horn said he would push for legislation allowing teachers to send report cards home evaluating parents.

The parent report card would evaluate the parents' performance in overseeing their child's progress in school. The criteria of the parent report card would include the parents' participation in programs such as PTA, checking their child's homework and parent/teacher conferences. The parent report cards would not affect their child's education but rather be used to emphasize to parents their needed role in children's education.

"The fundamental problem is a lack of participation of our parents," he said. "Are (local) hands tied at times? Yes. But is that the most important (education) problem? No."

Travis, 34, who is a graduate of University of Florida's law school, said he supported FCAT testing.

"If you can't measure something, you can't manage it," he said. "If we don't rate these schools, we're not doing our job."

Horn is marketing director of Point 2 Point Communications Inc., a Gainesville-based company that installs voice and computer data wiring in buildings and served in the U.S. Army from 1990-1994. He said if elected he would also fight to allow counties to keep their water resources and block legislation mandating water be distributed throughout Florida.

Oelrich said he is running for the District 14 seat in order to "top off a public service career." He has been Alachua County's sheriff for the past 14 years and involved in law enforcement for 30 years. In addition to being sheriff, Oelrich was also a St. Petersburg police officer and Florida Department of Law Enforcement officer for 12 years.

Before becoming sheriff, Oelrich owned a Nationwide Insurance agency in Alachua County for 10 years. He has a bachelor's degree in criminology from Florida State University.

More money should be left with local school boards, Oelrich said, instead of having Tallahassee collect taxes earmarked for education and redistributing it, with much of the funding tied to state mandates. And more of that money should also be used to teach students not bound for college a trade that would afford them a decent salary. That would create and keep more well-paying jobs in Florida, Oelrich said.

He also supports using tests such as the FCAT to measure the success or failure of teachers and local schools.

"I don't see anything wrong with accountability," he said. "I'm very much an advocate of schools being held to some kind sort of accountability."

Like Horn, Oelrich said water resources should be left where they were and not piped to high-growth areas in other counties.

Instead, Oelrich said state government should help South Florida develop more desalination projects.

Ed Jennings Jr. was elected to the Florida House in 2000. He said some of the best ways to ensure students get a good education is to help young parents.

As a legislator, Jennings said, he supported programs that helped teach parenting skills and young parents tutor their children with school work.

If elected, Jennings said he would also push for affordable health insurance for the estimated 3.5 million Floridians without access to basic medical care.

Jennings said he currently favors a plan that would involve both government and the private sector and would provide health insurance to working Floridians that now go without health insurance. Jennings said he wanted the cost of that health insurance to be paid evenly by employees, employers and state government.

Although his plan would require government funding, the public was already paying for those people without health coverage when they sought help in local emergency rooms. Jennings said.

"It (medical costs for the uninsured) comes back to us anyway," he said.

Jennings is the vice chair of the Florida House of Representative's Committee on Community Colleges and Workforce Development. He has a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Florida.

He is the president of Jennings Development Group Inc.

Jennings, a Democrat, said he was the best choice for the District 14 Florida senate seat because of his experience as a Florida representative.

"I'm the only real incumbent," he said, adding that his experience gave him "a better shot at making things happen" in the state Senate.