Incumbent
No
Education
Ocala Christian Academy / High School - Pensacola Christian College
City of Residence
Citra
Campaign Phone
352-553-6627
I am a lifelong Marion County resident, husband to Hannah, and father of five. I have spent more than a decade in public service, including seven years as Public Works & Utilities Administrator for Williston, where I managed budgets, infrastructure, grants, and real-world problem solving. I currently serve as City Manager of Archer, Chair of the Marion County Board of Adjustments, and Chair of the Citra Improvement Society. Those roles require leadership, accountability, listening, and making hard decisions with taxpayer dollars—exactly what our school system needs.
Teacher retention starts with respect, discipline, and pay that reflects the value of the classroom. I will push to move dollars away from waste, duplicated services, automatic contract renewals, and administrative bloat, and redirect savings toward teacher and staff compensation. We must address salary compression, protect planning time, improve discipline support, and give teachers classrooms where learning can happen. Teachers should not be asked to do more with less while the system avoids hard budget choices.
A school board member should not sit behind a dais and assume they know best. I will solicit input through campus visits, teacher roundtables, parent meetings, student conversations, surveys, and open community forums. I will weigh input by asking what improves safety, learning, accountability, and classroom quality. Teachers and staff know what is happening inside schools; parents know their children; students know the daily culture. I will listen to all of them, but decisions must be driven by facts, transparency, and results.
I am running because our children deserve safer schools, stronger classrooms, responsible finances, and a modern education that prepares them for life. Marion County cannot keep accepting low rankings, weak results, and excuses. My priorities are clear: school safety, fiscal responsibility, and a modern education experience that goes back to the fundamentals. That means strong reading and math fundamentals, cursive, career and technical pathways, life skills, technology readiness, and accountability for every dollar. I am not running to manage decline. I am running to help turn this district around.
Incumbent
No
Education
4.0 Masters in Educational Leadership
City of Residence
Ocala
Campaign Phone
352-327-8224
I am an MCPS graduate, parent, classroom teacher, and school leader with a master’s degree in Educational Leadership. I have served as a dean at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, working directly with students, families, teachers, support staff, and administrators. My experience includes discipline, threat management, school safety, PBIS, Title IX investigations, mentoring, disability services, attendance, and family support. I understand how policies made in a boardroom affect real classrooms. I know how to listen, study evidence, ask difficult questions, and work respectfully with people who disagree.
To attract and retain excellent teachers, we must offer competitive starting salaries, meaningful raises, and recognition of experience. We must also improve working conditions through dependable bathroom coverage, protected planning time, stronger substitute support, real help with persistent student behavior, less unnecessary paperwork, and stable leadership that does not break up successful teams. Employees should have reasonable access to state-approved medicines while maintaining student safety and legal compliance. Teachers stay where they feel respected, supported, protected, fairly paid, and treated with basic human decency.
Too much current feedback is lip service. Surveys are distributed, but the results are not meaningfully used, and many employees do not feel safe answering honestly because they fear retaliation, being labeled difficult, or losing opportunities. I would support confidential, independently administered surveys, public summaries, and clear explanations of what will change, what will not, and why. I would hold listening sessions, including separate spaces where teachers, staff, parents, and students can speak freely, visit schools, and provide anonymous options. I would weigh patterns, frontline expertise, student impact, law, cost, and fairness—not simply which side is loudest.
More children and families are suffering unnecessarily than most people realize. I estimate we are failing about 5% of students in every school. Those children become our neighbors, coworkers, and partners, and unmet needs later increase legal, mental-health, and social costs for everyone. With more funding, personnel, early intervention, and better working conditions, we could save every child. A fraction of Marion County’s wealth could solve problems we have accepted as inevitable. This seat would be a salary cut locked in for four years. I am not independently wealthy and will have to become an entrepreneur to make ends meet. I am doing this only for Marion County’s children and MCPS staff. I have no other motive.
Incumbent
Yes
Education
Doctorate in Educational Leadership from National Louis University
City of Residence
Anthony
I have a variety of experiences that have helped qualify me for this position.
As a former teacher and school based administrator I have an understanding of what happens on our campuses, each and every day.
As a small business owner, I operate two different preschool sites that generate more than 1.5 million dollars annually. I manage every dollar, balancing the budget and ensuring we run profitable sites that are equipped to serve children daily.
Finally, as the incumbent, I have done this exact job for the past 4 years. I am intimately familiar with the job, what it takes, and how to work collaboratively with my fellow board members and the Superintendent to accomplish what needs to be done to meet our students and staff needs.
Attracting and retaining high quality teachers is something that I have been addressing since the beginning of my first term.
As a board, we continue to address the pay compression that occurred when we raised starting teacher pay (prior to the beginning of my first term). Our starting teacher pay is now $50,000 / year, a salary that is competitive for our area of the state. However, we continue to have a need to address the salaries for teachers who have been working 10+ years.
As a board member, I will continue to advocate for addressing this salary compression and financially acknowledging the value of our most senior teachers with boosts in their pay.
Pay is one way I will continue to recruit & retain our high quality teachers.
As a current board member, I can testify that I am highly communicative. I reply to every email, message, phone call, or text. Fundamentally, I believe I work for the tax payer and have an obligation to be available to them for questions, comments, or concerns in a timely fashion.
I visit each of our schools annually which allows me to talk with school leaders as well as be visible with staff. I also visit with many of our departments regularly, ensuring our staff know how I can support their work.
I am active in the community, attending a variety of events and speaking with our parents and students. As a local MCYFL coach, I work directly with our youth and their parents.
I am a board member who is committed to improving MCPS.
As the current Chair of the Marion County School Board, I can attest that the work we are doing is paying off. Academically, we are moving in the right direction under the leadership of our new Superintendent.
The board continues to address growth in the SW by building 3 new schools in the last two years and adding a wing to a middle school. We continue to maximize how we spend our voter approved sales tax and newly adopted impact fees to meet facility needs across the district.
Our systems continue to improve, addressing our financial efficiency while having a balanced, student-first budget, recruiting and retaining qualified staff for all positions, and a focus on expanding Career and Technical Ed. programs on all campuses.
