A small audience comprised of educators, councilors, parents and children came to Mallory Hagan’s listening session at the Peerless Grill in Anniston. She’s one of two candidates in the Democratic Party running for the 3^rd Congressional District.  She said it’s important for a representative to listen to the people in their district. The topic was on education and how she could help the people in Anniston.

Psychologist Lucile Bodenheimer said plenty on the matter of education. “I always thought there was a separation of church and state?  The secretary of education thinks that religious schools have more priority than public schools. I have a real issue with public tax money going to religious facilities,” said Bodenheimer.

Her top priority with education is not to privatize our schools but to keep them public. She also took a shot at Governor Bob Riley for “stealing money from public schools and giving it to charter schools.” There is currently one charter school in the state of Alabama. By 2020, Montgomery, Birmingham, Huntsville and Livingston will have a charter school in their city. But critics say its unfair for smaller cities to have to contribute money for schools that are not available to them.

The alternative might have to be vocational schools instead, which is just as important to Hagan as charter schools. “ Forty percent of people in this district are underemployed and a lot of people don’t have the skill set to match the type of employment that we have. If we focus on career tech education, we can bridge that gap between the skills that industries and companies need and what we provide from our workforce.”

One graduate from Anniston was concerned for her former high school.  She believes that the graduation rates are becoming lower and lower since she graduated in 1981 with 312. In 2016, Anniston was 1 of 3 schools in Calhoun County that had graduation rates under the percentage state average (89.2).  She wondered what Anniston could do if charters schools start coming around in Anniston.

“We start by holding our representatives accountable,” said Hagan. “We have legislators in our state who are not doing what’s best for our kids and our public schools and therefore families are choosing to go elsewhere for education, creating a further divide. We have the means and the resources to pay teachers more than a livable wage. It’s just the allocation of those funds have been poorly mismanaged.”

Teachers in the audience were at odds with the common core program and how it takes away their right to teach freely. Some teachers say common core is taking away the fun in teaching. Teachers are forced to teach subjects in a particular way because common core is used nationwide so that children would get the same education no matter where they were. Hagan said common core had good intentions, but the way it was implemented was bad. Furthermore, Hagan is not the biggest fan of standardize testing, stating, “standardize testing to me has led to a real deficit in critical thinking skills.”   

Hagan will have to defeat Adia Winfrey in the Democratic Primary Election in order to advance to the General Election. Republican Mike Rogers has been the 3^rd Congressional District Representative since 2002. The district emcompasses 10 counties including Calhoun and St.Clair.

For more information, follow Hagan on all social network platforms @haganforhouse.