Candidate: Cynthia Gibbs

I'm Cindy Gibbs. Thanks for taking the time to learn about me and my school board goals.

As a mom and a professional educator, I offer valuable perspectives from both inside and outside the classroom. I believe in the power of a high-quality, public education so much that I spent years teaching in our schools, and my children attend Storm Grove Middle School and Sebastian River High School. I want to help to improve the quality of education in Indian River County for all students and their families. I am currently employed as a professional development coach for the nationally-recognized Working Solutions, LLC. I create and implement curriculum designed to train customer service representatives. I teach hundreds of independent contractors how to build a small business. We assume positive intent, we follow through and we get results. We analyze data and work directly with people to determine the best courses of action for their, and our, success. I plan to use this approach as a school board member, too. 

Our teachers work hard and deserve to be represented by someone with years of experience in the classroom with children, and who truly knows the job. My joy was in watching students grow in their academic and social lives, and I never desired to leave the classroom for an administrative position. Instead, I joined the literacy non-profit, The Learning Alliance as a Moonshot After-School educator, while still teaching elementary school. 

We are achieving great things already in SDIRC and we must continue to move forward providing every possible opportunity for our students to achieve their potential. I'd love to see even more expansion of the CTE program in our High Schools, and I will advocate for life skills and workforce skills classes in our middle schools--cooking, home-economics, industrial arts and technology are still essential skills, and our schools should be a part of this learning. 

How do we help our youth to  achieve a world-class education in Indian River County Schools? 

• Hire, professionally develop and maintain the highest-quality educators. Our teachers must have professional development training that specifically targets best practices for their area of focus. Teachers should be learning from other educational experts, and should have time to practice and evaluate what they've learned. Time is too precious to be spent on trainings that don't directly impact our children's success.

• Support all staff at schools–custodians, cafeteria staff, office staff, bus drivers, counselors, health and wellness staff–the whole team supports our students and they need our support in return, financially, and with high-quailty, actionable professional development. 

• Involve parents and the community-at-large in the public school system in meaningful, impactful ways whether through volunteering in classrooms, mentorships, apprenticeships, as well as holding accountable all stakeholders from students to administrators.

• Create and maintain strong, healthy relationships between students, families and the schools--collaboration is key. 

Views on Public Education

• I support parental rights insofar as no one parent’s rights supersede another’s. Our society is a multi-faceted blend of cultures and lifestyles and our public schools should reflect that.

• Our public schools are here to educate all children. Our approach and our policies must reflect this. We must ensure that all children feel safe and cared for so they can LEARN. 

• Teachers must be allowed to use their educational expertise to provide best-practice-based and standards-based learning for our students. Administrators should work to support students and teachers before all else, for they are the foundation of the education system.

• Students must be held accountable for their academic and social behavior. The schools must provide consistent, reasonable consequences for students who are not meeting academic or social goals. Students, families and schools must collaborate toward student success. 

• Censorship is un-American. Parents and teachers should partner in guiding children to choose reading material that interests them. We need to be encouraging literacy amongst our youth. People are bound to encounter new things that puzzle them throughout their lives; it's the responsibility of their trusted adults to help them to advocate for themselves as they learn responsibility.

• Our teachers use the state-provided standards to educate our children. Teachers in Indian River County Schools are dedicated to their profession, and they strive to enrich the academic lives of all students. There is no evidence of Critical Race Theory in any of our classrooms. It is not part of the state-approved standards. Human sexuality and other sensitive topics are not taught in elementary or middle school. The High School Health curriculum contains some more sensitive topics such as divorce, verbal, physical and sexual abuse, substance abuse and suicide. These are issues that are important for our teenagers to know about, and these topics are part of the state-approved standards.

• I encourage you to review the state standards at www.cpalms.org

I'm happy to answer your questions when you email me at gibbs4schools@gmail.com

Let's do this! Vote Gibbs on November 8th, 2022