Kansas Board of Education candidate Jim Hannon stopped at Emporia’s Hammond Park on Friday as part of a fundraiser organized by the Emporia NEA and Lyon County Democrats.
Hannon tells KVOE News he embraces a model combining state oversight and local control.
An Emporia teacher for nearly four decades, Hannon admits he has some reservations about the current education redesign push underway across Kansas, including two Emporia schools highlighted earlier this week on KVOE — Logan Avenue and William Allen White. Hannon says his reservations are more with how redesign efforts will impact teachers and less with the overall goals of the effort.
On funding, Hannon is pleased with the direction the Legislature took this past session to get more money to schools. However, he says districts are still in a bad spot when it comes to salaries and benefits because spending power among teachers is actually worse now than it was in 1999.
Hannon, a Democrat, is pitted against Republican Ben Jones of Sterling for the Seventh District, which includes Lyon, Chase, Morris and the west half of Wabaunsee counties in the KVOE listening area. The district also includes all or parts of Dickinson, Ellsworth, Geary, Harvey, Kingman, Marion, McPherson, Pottawatomie, Reno and Sedgwick counties.
The general election is Nov. 6. Voter registration ends Oct. 16. Advance voting begins Oct. 22, and Oct. 30 is the last day to apply for a mail ballot.
