VIRGINIA BEACH — Two first-time candidates seek the School Board seat in District 4.
They are Ken Lubeck, an information technology professional who worked with at-risk youth, and Staci Martin, who manages a statewide grant program for the state tourism authority and teaches English and sustainable tourism courses at the college level.
District 4 is one of the new voting districts created under a 10-district voting system that resulted from a federal civil rights suit that challenged the former at-large system. Unlike the previous system, now only voters within a district can pick its representatives on City Council and School Board.
The court decision that led to the new system was successfully appealed by the city, but officials have said the 10-district system will be used for this year’s local elections.
Lubeck, who served in the U.S. Navy as an enlisted corpsman, has two decades in the IT field, and he is a parent with two children in city schools. He moved here in 1986 to serve aboard a ship, and he studied at Tidewater Community College and Old Dominion University, and ultimately Regent University, where he earned a graduate degree in theology.
He worked with at-risk youth before moving to work in Silicon Valley for several years. He returned here eight years ago.
He said he supports parental rights and has been concerned about the lowering of educational standards.
“I don’t think kids are getting the foundation they need,” he said. “Covid really decimated a percentage of the kids. Anyone working with at-risk kids knows what I’m talking about.”
At his campaign website, Lubeck’s priorities include student safety and ensuring parents have a say in educational issues, including being able to give permission before students have access to “R-rated material.”
“I don’t think schools need to get into ideology,” Lubeck said. “They need to teach the basics. They need to teach the kids, not indoctrinate them.”
He said he is an analytical person who can solve problems.
“I’m an independent thinker, and I will do what I think is best,” he said.
And he said a priority is addressing teacher morale and ensuring they have support for their work in the classroom.
Martin dealt with family instability in her youth in Texas, and said she needed to drop out of school to work. She earned her GED and began to work toward her college degree.
“I was an avid reader,” Martin said. “Books really helped me get through and inspired me.”
She moved to Virginia in 1998, and returned to higher education as a parent, even writing about the experience of going back to school with kids. She said she wanted to get a good job.
“It was really important to me to think about the future and my children’s future,” Martin said.
She earned her undergraduate degree at Radford University and a master of arts in English at Old Dominion University. And now one of her children is a college graduate and the other is in city schools.
Priorities for her campaign include expanding opportunities for trades and technology education so young people can get good jobs without debt and tackling issues such as school infrastructure, noting that Kempsville High School eventually needs to be replaced. Martin would like to see studies that look at health issues that may affect people in old schools compared to new ones.
She also wants to look at bus routes and compensation for drivers, as well as educators and school personnel. She said the local voting district system would give her the chance, if elected, to make a difference in the immediate community as its representative.
“It will give me an opportunity to really focus on schools in the district and neighborhoods that feed into schools outside the district,” she said.
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