Meet the candidates: Leon County voters have choices for school district superintendent
Meet the candidates: Leon County voters have choices for school district superintendent
Three candidates are running for superintendent of schools in Leon County. Learn about their experience, issues and motivation to seek office.
Two Democrats and one independent are running for superintendent of schools in Leon County.
Superintendent Rocky Hanna, a Democrat, is seeking reelection and is facing primary challenger Genleah “Star” Swain. Independent candidate Joe Burgess is also running to lead the district.
Because the race is partisan, a primary election between the two Democratic candidates will take place on Tuesday, Aug. 20.
In the primary, only registered Democratic voters may cast a ballot. The deadline to register to vote or change party affiliation is on Monday, July 22.
Early voting for the primary election will take place Saturday, Aug. 10 - Saturday, Aug. 18.
The Democratic primary winner will run against the independent candidate in the general election. Election Day is on Tuesday, Nov. 5.
Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley announced last week that his office has begun sending out mail-in ballots to voters across the county, with about 33,000 expected to go out over the next several days. Voters who requested a mail-in ballot must return it to the election supervisor’s office by 7 p.m. on Election Day in both the primary and general elections.
Rocky Hanna
Superintendent Rocky Hanna is seeking a third and final term in office after leading the district for eight years.
“We've done a lot of good work over the course of the last eight years,” he said. “But there’s still more work to do.”
Specifically, he’s proud of how the district has handled COVID-19 pandemic under his leadership, Hanna said. “In addition to managing the pandemic, we've done a lot of good things. We've made our schools safer than ever before,” Hanna said. “We've pushed more resources down to our schools and classrooms for instructional materials and supplies and technology. We have increased salaries.”
For the last 37 years, Hanna has worked for Leon County Schools, holding almost every position in the district. At age 23, he started out as a hall monitor, Hanna said. “I started at the bottom of the organizational chart.”
Throughout his career, he’s worked as a teacher, coach, dean of students, an assistant principal, a principal, divisional director and superintendent of schools, Hanna said. “It’s been a dream career,” he said. “You could not have written a better story.”
There are no term limits for superintendent of schools, but if he’s reelected he plans to retire after a third term, he said. “I do not consider myself a politician,” Hanna said. “I’m going to step away and let someone else come in with fresh ideas.”
If reelected, Hanna promises that the district will become debt-free by 2028. So far, the district has reduced its debt by about $170 million under his watch, Hanna said. “My goal has been to reduce capital debt, to live within our means and then to leave our district in a financially-secure place when I step away.”
In his view, the three most important issues facing the district are overcoming the “academic regression” and “social issues” that arose from the pandemic, recruiting and retaining teachers and competing with private schools and homeschool programs, which have recently received more state funding in the form of vouchers.
“For the first time in history, we find ourselves competing for public tax dollars with the expansion of charters and — even worse, in my opinion — the expansion of vouchers going to private schools,” Hanna said. “Our public schools are now under attack.”
During the pandemic, achievement scores, attendance numbers and graduation rates fell, data from the Florida Department of Education shows. “We still have a lot of work to do to get our students back on track both academically and socially.”
In addition to working on pandemic recovery, he wants to continue expanding workforce education programs, which give students opportunities to land good-paying jobs after they graduate high school instead of attending a four-year college or university, Hanna said.
Another accomplishment that Hanna cites is his focus on school safety while in office. During his first term, he oversaw the hiring of 50 new school security monitors, who work alongside armed security guards, Hanna said. “Over the last eight years, we’ve worked to enhance all of our school safety features.”
The district has also invested more in arts and athletics programs while he’s been in office, Hanna said. “We know how vitally important those extra-curricular and co-curricular programs are for our kids.”
Hanna has received endorsements from Leon County School Board Members Daryl Jones and Marcus Nicolas, as well as School Board Chair Roseanne Wood.
Genleah “Star” Swain
Genleah “Star” Swain, a former elementary school principal at Florida A&M University Developmental Research School, is running for public office for the first time in an effort to bring “change” to school district leadership.
“There needs to be more focus on students, teaching and learning and bringing quality back to the classrooms,” Swain said. “Who better than me to get it done?”
Swain has owned a daycare and has more than two decades of experience working in PreK-12 education, with almost all of that time spent in schools in Leon County. In addition to serving as principal, she’s worked as an assistant principal, literacy coach, teacher, after-school program coordinator, curriculum committee member and a school based leadership team member.
“As a teacher, I feel I was very successful in my classroom,” Swain said. “I've had the opportunity to play roles that crossed over between the school and the district.”
Swain is famous for singing an impromptu rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Lincoln Memorial in a viral video that has been shared millions of times on social media. “That's how most people in Tallahassee know me.”
In her view, the most important issues facing the district are discipline and safety, the quality of classroom instruction and teacher pay, Swain said.
“We’re losing a lot of teachers,” she said. “There needs to be more intentionality in making sure that the teachers are getting better pay.”
Swain says she also supports pay raises for other district employees, including cafeteria workers, bus drivers and classroom support staff. “Everyone should feel valued.”
When it comes to discipline and safety, the district needs a clearer and more uniform code of conduct to give school leaders more support in decision-making and parents and students a better understanding of the policy, Swain said. “Right now, it seems like different schools are doing different things.”
Swain, who’s a parent of a middle school student in the district, says she understands this issue from a parent’s perspective first-hand. “Let's say, God forbid, my child got in trouble. And I, as a parent, go to the code of conduct and say, ‘Okay, what's going to be the consequence?’ There is no clear outline.”
In addition to strengthening the district’s discipline policy, she would like to see a greater emphasis on improving education outcomes, Swain said. “There's not a strong focus on curriculum and instruction,” Swain said. “I don't see the strong sense of urgency to make sure that our students are leaving schools successful, that they can read at the rate that they're supposed to be reading.”
Nearly half of the district’s students — about 48% — performed below grade level on the statewide English and Language Arts assessments during the 2022-2023 academic year, data from the department of education shows.
The district should prioritize improving “school grades” and “closing disparities” between lower-performing and higher-performing schools, she said. “Those conversations are not being readily had — they’re not at the forefront.”
Earlier this year, the district spent $100,000 on rebranding itself with a new logo and marketing campaign in an effort to attract more students to the district. Swain says there needs to be changes aimed at improving the quality of education in the district alongside the new logo. “We have this brand new logo, but we don't have a brand new mindset yet,” Swain said. “The focus and the passion and the drive for actual education is not what's driving the school district — that has to change.”
Swain hasn’t yet received any official endorsements for her campaign.
Joe Burgess
Joe Burgess, principal at Lawton Chiles High School, is seeking public office for the first time. “It’s been a dream” to serve as superintendent of schools, Burgess said.
“I believe I have the wherewithal, the skills and the knowledge to make things better,” he said. “I can put us back in a position to be one of the preeminent districts in the state of Florida.”
Burgess has spent 25 years working in the district, serving as a teacher, coach, athletic director, dean of students, an assistant principal and a principal. He’s also served on district committees. “I have done tons of work for the district,” he said. “I have a record of excellence.”
He’s served as principal at “all three levels”: elementary school, middle school and high school, Burgess said. “It’s hard to find people who have been principal at all three levels.”
When he was a principal at Springwood Elementary School, he moved the school’s academic rankings from a “C” to an “A,” Burgess said.
“I know how to motivate people,” he said. “I know how to come up with plans in unique situations, and every school I've been at has not been like the other.”
Burgess says this experience will help him leading the district if he’s elected.
“When you have great-performing public schools, it kind of energizes the entire city,” Burgess said. “I want to be able to provide that.”
In his view, the most important issues facing the district include school attendance, academic achievement and boosting assessment scores among “underserved communities” and “minority populations,” Burgess said.
“We need to do more to make sure our students know how to perform,” he said. “We want to put them in positions where they are going to make positive impacts as adults, especially in our community here in Tallahassee.”
About 36% of students in Leon County Schools were “chronically” absent — missed 10% of days or more — during the 2022-2023 school year, data from the department of education shows. Nearly a quarter of the district’s students missed 21 days or more days.
“We've got to get more kids back into school,” Burgess said.
Raising students’ standardized test scores would become another important goal for Burgess if he’s elected. The district received an overall “B” rating in the 2022-2023 school year, state department of education data shows. “Some people out there will say ‘We're okay,’ but I I'm not here for ‘okay,’“ Burgess said. “We need better achievement across the board.”
To improve student performance, changes are needed, Burgess said. “There has to be some changes in the way that we work,” he said. “There also has to be strong, robust conversations between teachers and leadership or management of the district, so that we're hearing them out.”
Burgess also takes issue with how the district handled recent tornadoes that touched down in Leon County in May. “It was just a haphazard response to begin with, and then the subsequent reactions were haphazard,” Burgess said.
Students had already begun the school day at Chiles High School, and the district told them to go home. Burgess says he felt it was too dangerous to send them home because the weather was still bad in North Tallahassee.
“If I say, ‘Hey, I can't release kids right now because it's actually a little dangerous,’ we hold school,” he said. “But they said, ‘Oh, no.’ They trumped everyone and said, ‘Hey, you release them right now.’”
Burgess has received an endorsement from former Vice President of the Leon Classroom Teachers Association Cheryl Collier Brown, a local education activist.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that most of Star Swain’s experience as an educator was in Leon County Schools. That has been changed to “schools in Leon County” because most of her experience has been in schools outside the district.