Months after a successful campaign to renew a sales tax, incumbents on the Sarasota School Board are back on the campaign trail, this time defending their own jobs. Both incumbents running for re-election—Shirley Brown and Jane Goodwin—are fending off challenges from local control advocates—respectively Helen Wolff and Randy McLendon. The incumbents are running on a record of positive accomplishments and a need for continuity, while the challengers are focused on an independent curriculum and a resistance to the national Common Core standards.

In District 5, School Board chairwoman Goodwin is being challenged by McLendon, returning to the ballot after a bid for the Sarasota County Commission two years ago. McLendon said it was the arrival of Common Core in the public discourse that agitated him into running. "No parents like it, few teachers like it," he said. "It's hard on administrators, and the School Board is not interested in pushing back." He said both School Board members and state lawmakers should be countering the effort to federal uniform standards and that teachers should have the freedom to build curriculum out of the needs of individual students.

Goodwin, though, said she is supportive of the objectives of Common Core, called the Florida Sunshine Standards in Florida, and said Sarasota County has succeeded in maintaining a strong curriculum. She noted the standards are set by the state, not the School Board. But Goodwin's daughter, a teacher at Sarasota High School, has offered first-hand accounts that the standards create a good environment and encourage critical thinking in a positive way.  "Students enjoy it and more engaged in the classroom," she said. "The days of students sitting in a classroom taking notes and listening to a lecture, the teacher at a whiteboard, are done. Now students are learning from each other as well as the teacher, and we have found this to be a very good process."

In the District 4 race, incumbent Brown was similarly proud of the accomplishments of local students. "The District is moving in the right direction," she said. The 77 percent approval for the recent school tax vote showed an endorsement of the school board's policies in Brown's eyes. As for Common Core, she said much of the consternation comes from misinformation about the standards. "It's just a different way of pushing critical thinking in teaching," she said. "The curriculum in schools is different and more rigorous than it has been, and I don't have a problem with that."

But Wolff said the new federal standards are taking education in an entirely new direction, and she doesn't like the outside interference. "I will support efforts to retain and regain local control for teachers, parents and local officials," she said. "Those are the ones who best understand the needs here." She said students will be better served through partnerships with area professionals and allowing teachers more control of what gets taught in classrooms, and she said local officials should be able to determine if a curriculum is being blown through too quickly.

The nonpartisan Sarasota School Board races will be held Aug. 26 and are open to all Sarasota County voters.