School Board — District 3: Misty Servia

Age: 52

Occupation: Certified planner

Hometown: Sarasota

About: Servia is parent of three Manatee public school children and has been involved on more than 10 boards and groups during 28 years. These include Leadership Manatee Board of Governors, Take Stock in Children, Manatee County Housing Authority, PACE Center for Girls, and others.

Several schools are at or over capacity. How can you as a board member have an impact?

We must continue to work on ensuring all of our schools are of high quality, so that school choice helps to “even out” what can sometimes seem like unequal capacity patterns throughout the county. We need to ensure our schools with low capacity are run in a way that helps them attract students from other parts of the district where schools are over capacity. One way is to offer special programs at the lower capacity schools. This dilemma is also why I strongly support the renewal of the half-cent sales tax. We need a new high school in Parrish, and several other schools need expansion or upgrading. We will face a major shortfall without the continuation of the half cent for infrastructure.

Do you think elementary schools need school resource officers or should staff handle that? Why/not?

Our elementary schools definitely need school resource officers. Teachers should not be left to fulfill the role of classroom security in addition to all of their other classroom demands. In addition, in today’s highly litigious society, it is risky to leave teachers having to physically interact with students at all. Unfortunately, in this day and age, school resource officers are an essential need. Resource officers also help to build a positive perception of police officers with our young children.

Manatee County Schools got a mixed bag for grades this year? How do you think manatee county schools are performing academically?

No doubt, our public schools can do better, which is one of the main reasons I’m running. My incumbent opponent believes we should “continue the progress,” but, unfortunately, we aren’t seeing progress in the district’s overall grade. We can and should do better.