Karla Wieland-Cherry
Running for school board in Talbot County District 5
How old will you be on Election Day (Nov. 5)?
55
Are you currently employed? If so, where, and what is your job title?
Registered nurse, associate broker real estate, volunteer.
What is the highest level of education that you completed, and where did you get that degree?
Associate’s degree in business from Chesapeake College, associate of science in nursing from Wor-Wic Community College, currently finishing bachelor of science at University of Maryland Global Campus.
Why are you running for the school board?
I am running for the Talbot County Board of Education to work to improve our local school system. Goals I hope to achieve will be to improve student test scores by bringing in qualified teachers and retaining current teachers; raising education benchmark standards; increasing use of career and technical education programs; improving student discipline rules; improving school safety measures; and improving communication transparency between school, teachers, parents and the community.
What makes you a good candidate for the board?
I am dedicated to enhancing each student’s learning opportunity as a positive experience in a safe and secure learning environment with qualified instructors and working to make each student feel supported as an individual with their own personal goal settings as well as standard education goal expectations of basic learning. I am an excellent leader in this community and want to work as a team with the school staff and administration to achieve a brighter future for all.
What is the most important issue facing your school board and what would you do about it if elected?
Our most important issues are lack of teaching staff due to poor discipline of unruly students, which puts teachers’ and other students’ safety and security at risk. Students can't learn if there are no teachers to teach and threats occurring every day. We need to address the lack of school discipline and safety to entice teachers to want to come work in our community schools. Teachers don't feel supported by the current board and have a distrust of it. I want to rebuild the trust by listening to our teachers’ needs and concerns and addressing those needs in a more supportive manner.
Please name a public leader you admire and explain why.
I admire our 4-H Extension leader, Tom Hutson. He is a positive person every day, and you rarely see him get mad or frustrated even though you know he must be! He handles the stress of an overwhelming, thankless job, working tirelessly to bring awareness of 4-H programs to students all over Talbot County with little outside community support, especially from our current school board. Our school system can greatly benefit from 4-H programs inside our schools, as other states do.
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, passed by the General Assembly in 2021, is a 10-year plan that includes increased education funding to support early childhood education, increased teacher starting pay, college/career-readiness standards for high school graduates, and expanded services to multilingual and impoverished families, among other goals. Please tell us your views on the Blueprint and how it will affect your school district.
It is already a struggling program with counties that cannot budget the Blueprint in their school funding. For starters, counties can't fund the higher teacher salaries, so schools are already understaffed, including Talbot County schools. There is also a lack of teachers for the specialized programs for minority multi-language learners. It prioritizes equity and not education. No student learns the same way, and it should be based on each student’s individuality of learning and use of those strengths for learning and college/career readiness. Addressing minority needs would no longer be necessary if we stopped looking at them as “minorities” but individuals who are worthy of learning and have strengths that we are overlooking because they have to be “equal” to someone else, whoever that someone else may be?
Some school districts nationwide are placing new limits on the use of cellphones in middle and high schools. What do you think should be the policy on student use of cellphones in your district, and why do you support that policy?
I absolutely love this plan and think we definitely need to reduce and possibly remove cellphone usage in schools. It detracts from learning in a plethora of ways. We can allow students to have some time to use their cellphones in a controlled setting during the school day if necessary, i.e., lunchtime. This will help reduce cheating, interruptions with texting and calls, school bullying and possibly and hopefully school threats of violence.
Are you satisfied with your school district's efforts to ensure the safety of its students? What, if anything, should be done to improve school safety in your district?
According to the multiple number of teachers I have spoken to, school safety is their main concern. They feel threatened by students and feel a lack of support from administration and the current board with handling of these threats. We need to re-address school discipline measures and take improved steps to reduce the threats and in some cases, violence. Teaching and learning cannot take place in an environment that one feels unsafe in.
Do you think there are circumstances when books should be removed from school libraries? If so, what kind of books should be removed, and who should make those decisions?
No — books should not be removed from school libraries. They need to be age-appropriate books for students. Parents have the legal right to make decisions for their children and should be respected for those decisions regardless of color, religion, familial status, sex, national origin, marital status, race, disability, age, genetics, source of income, gender, mental or physical disability.
Some school districts enact policies allowing transgender and gender nonconforming students to use their preferred pronouns while at the same time not informing those students' parents about that decision. What is your opinion of such policies?
Transparency of communication is vital for parents to be involved in their child's learning and education expectations under the age of 18. Parents, not teachers, have the legal right to make decisions for their children and should be respected for those decisions regardless of color, religion, familial status, sex, national origin, marital status, race, disability, age, genetics, source of income, gender, mental or physical disability.
