League of Women Voters of the Cincinnati Area Education Fund
	Hamilton County, OH November 8, 2011 Election
	Candidates Answer Questions on the Issues Board Member; Forest Hills Local School District

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of the Cincinnati Area and asked of all candidates for this office.     See below for questions on Qualifications, Equity, Student test results, Building Consensus, Budget Click on a name for candidate information.   See also more information about this contest. 1. What are your qualifications for office? Answer from Randy Smith: Eight years of experience on the Forest Hills Board of Education. Also, I was selected by my peers to be vice president and currently serve as president of the Board. After growing up and attending school twelve years in the Forest Hills School District I attended UC and graduated with degrees in Management, Marketing and Industrial Engineering. My children attended and graduated from Forest Hills schools. My career includes 32 years of management experience at Procter & Gamble. I have extensive training from the Ohio School Board Association. I have attended over 30 Ohio School Board Association training meetings from 2003 to 2011. As a result of my training and participation in School Board activities I received Ohio School Board Association (OSBA) Master Board Member status in 2007 (only 9 of over 3500 Ohio Board members received this designation in 2007). I have received the OSBA award of achievement every year from 2004 through 2010. I was one of only two board members in the second congressional district selected to represent board members at the Federal Relations Network. I was elected president of the Ohio School Board Association South West Ohio Region for 2012. 2. What would you do to advance the concept of "equity in education" in your district? Answer from Randy Smith: Every child deserves an equitable education within our public schools. Board policies must support a quality education for all students regardless of their capability or personal goals. 3. How would you use your students' state test results to improve education in your district? Answer from Randy Smith: Test scores along are not a good tool for improving education. However, value added data can be a useful tool to evaluate student progress as well as true teacher effectiveness. Value added data is a read of a student's progress over a given period of time. Value added data measures student progress at the beginning of a year compared to where they are at the end of a year. 4. What will you do to build consensus in the community in support of public schools? Answer from Randy Smith: I will continue to communicate with all segments of our community regarding what the FHSD is accomplishing and where we need community input. I attend numerous community meetings on a regular basis. For example, since I am a member of the Anderson Township Chamber of commerce I regularly communicate with that organization as well as the Anderson Township trustees and the Village of Newtown Council to keep open a dialog and to reach the people that follow these groups. 5. What are your budget priorities? Answer from Randy Smith: 1)Recruit and maintain the best faculty and staff with an appropriate and reasonable compensation package. 2)Minimize property tax increases. Make our existing levies last as long as possible and when the district must have a new levy, keep the millage as low as possible. 3)Look for ways to save money in our existing budget and keep the district budget increases as close to the rate of inflation as possible. Until just recently the district rate of increase was averaging twice the rate of inflation which is simply unsustainable. For example, the district has combined with other districts on energy contracts and copier contracts to save money. And we are in the process of creating a health care consortium to save a considerable amount of money on health care. 4)Influence the state to restore a fair funding model which will not disadvantage the FHSD. Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' statements are presented as submitted. Word limits may apply. See individual questions for specific word limits. Direct references to opponents are not permitted. Please edit your work before submitting. We are unable to provide spell-check at this time. The order of the candidates is random and changes daily. Candidates who did not respond are not listed on this page.