Wake school board picks education consultant for empty board seat

The school board voted 7 to 1, via written ballot, Friday to appoint Craston Artis II to fill the empty District 4 board seat until the November election.

He is scheduled to be sworn at the board's Jan. 18 at 1:30 p.m., before the board begins its 2:30 p.m. work session before the regular board meeting.​

Artis is a consultant at Artis Consulting, focusing on education and economic projects. He's also recently begun working in education technology.

The board interviewed him and three other candidates publicly Friday afternoon before voting. A fifth candidate withdrew his application before the interview process.

On Friday, Artis told the board he wants to focus on equity efforts to improve academic performance, help more and diverse people graduate from teaching programs, help the district hire those teachers, and ensure the district's infrastructure is well-maintained.

In his application, Artis wrote that he wants to work on equitable delivery of education, external partnerships, finance, teaching and learning, and community engagement.

Artis is not entirely new to the district; he was a founding member of the Community Equity Leadership Team that advises the district on equity issues.

Artis' interview was the first of the day, at 1 p.m. The board scheduled interviews an hour apart and voted just after 5 p.m.

District 4 stretches from downtown Raleigh on the west, the western edge of Knightdale on the east, State Highway 401 to the north and just past I-40 to the south.

The other candidates were education consultant in juvenile justice Michael T. Williams, retired information technology manager Michael T. Farmer, current district instructional assistant Daniel Lamar Grant-King.

Lonnie Charles Ervin II, recently an administrator at the district's alternative high school, withdrew his application.

Because the board voted via written ballot, how each board member voted was concealed.

Board members asked each candidate the same set of questions. They concerned the board's strategic plan for the district, magnet schools, student assignment, community relations and leadership, among other things.

All four candidates delivered a common response to questions about magnet schools and student assignment: Magnet schools are good, neighborhood schools are important, and the district should avoid sending students on long bus rides.

Artis, whose son attends a magnet school, supports busing but said the district should look at shortening bus rides by locating academies or schools with extra offerings closer to more people.

"While we should continue to use magnet schools and busing as tools... There may be some ways that geographically we can start to connect different areas," Artis said.

Williams said busing away from neighborhood schools can send parents the message that their neighborhood school isn't good enough. Grant-King said parents need consistency and not for their children to be assigned to different schools than one another.

Williams, during his interview, said he wanted to hold schools to high expectations and provide every school with whatever they needed so that the district wouldn't be inclined to send students away from any schools. He also said he wanted to boost in-class academically and intellectually gifted offerings, encourage working with students without bias, and use Title I funds to engage more parents, potentially by providing them with transportation to school meetings.

Farmer, in his interview, said he wanted to use data to track students over time and better assess why certain trends might be occurring.

He mentioned data suggesting most students aren't college-ready but noted the data don't actually say why that would be the case.

"This tells me what’s going on, but to answer the question of why requires deep data analysis," he said.

Farmer said his background may not include a lot of work in education but that he believed he had skills complementary to the rest of the board.

Grant-King emphasized advocating for employees to make sure they have what they need to do their jobs well. He also said the district needs to offer more career and technical education and work with community colleges on giving students more work experience before graduating high school.

EARLIER:

A retired information technology manager, three executives of education or youth-oriented companies and a current Wake County Public School System instructional assistant have all applied to be the Wake County Board of Education newest representative.

The board will interview the candidates Friday and then vote on the candidates.

Whomever receives at least five votes will represent part of downtown and east Raleigh and parts of eastern Wake County.

Both the interviews and the vote will be held publicly. The interviews begin Friday at 1 p.m. at the school system’s headquarters in Cary and can also be watched live on the district’s YouTube page.

One of the five candidates will fill the District 4 board seat until the November elections. Former Board Chairman Keith Sutton vacated his seat after more than 12 years to become the Superintendent of Warren County Schools.

District 4 stretches from downtown Raleigh on the west, the western edge of Knightdale on the east, State Highway 401 to the north and just past I-40 to the south.

The candidates, in alphabetical order, are Craston Artis III, Lonnie Charles Ervin II, Michael T. Farmer, Daniel Lamar Grant-King and Michael T. Williams.

Each candidate submitted a resume, a letter of interest and letters of recommendation: