Editor’s Note — As the Midterm Election season begins to heat up in both Hillsborough and Pasco Counties — and throughout the entire State of Florida — we will attempt to preview as many of the local races in which voters in New Tampa & Wesley Chapel can cast ballots between now and the Primary Election on Tuesday, August 18, and continuing up until the General Election on Tuesday, November 3. Our first preview is the nonpartisan District 6 Hillsborough School Board race between the two-term incumbent (and current Board Chair) Karen Perez and her opponents Sally Harris Williamson and Kenneth “Ken” Gay.
Two-term District 6 incumbent Karen Perez, 62, is the only candidate of the three who has ever lived in New Tampa and she has been both the chair and vice-chair during her eight years on School Board.
Karen has seen — and had to deal with — all of the changes happening throughout the District. She and her fellow School Board members also unanimously voted last month to put extending the half-cent sales tax that — according to Superintendent of Schools Van Ayres — has already funded 910 completed projects, to the tune of $1.25 billion, thanks to the first eight years of the tax. The original half-penny sales tax will expire in 2028 unless voters approve extending it for ten more years.
As for what Karen thinks are the major accomplishments the School Board has made during her tenure, she says that the graduation rates at both Wharton and Freedom have gone up during her tenure. “And, across the District, we’re up to a 93% graduation rate, which is great,” she says. “But this year, we want to look at that 7% who didn’t graduate and see what they need, and put those services and supports in place to get that remaining 7% over that threshold.”
Karen also mentions that throughout the Tampa Bay area, “a lot of students didn’t go to school (this year) because of ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) — because they were afraid. But, we didn’t have too much of that in New Tampa.”
She added, however, that a few years ago, “There were a lot of kids skipping school, hanging out at the Walmart (next to Wharton) and we had complaints from Walmart about those students, but that’s tapered down, so I’m excited about that change, too.”
Karen also says that she attended this year’s awards ceremony at Freedom High and Liberty Middle School, and a lot of accolades were being given to students, their parents and the teachers for improving the students’ grades — and the schools’ grades.
“Liberty is looking like an ‘A’ school and Freedom is looking like it will be a ‘B’ school this year,” she says, “so that parent involvement has really made a big difference.”
She also says that she and Dist. 3 Board member and chair Jessica Vaughn, who also lives in New Tampa, are looking into trying to find teacher-only housing in the New Tampa area, “and of course, paying our teachers a livable wage is still Priority One for me,” she says. “New Tampa is an amazing area and we want our teachers to be able to afford to [live and] remain in this area.”
Karen also is trying to make sure that underutilized schools are filled, “which is why we have to move Pizzo’s students to schools with empty space (including Tampa Palms Elementary), so the ‘Schools of Hope’ don’t come in to claim those spaces. I want our parents to know that I’m a big ‘No’ on giving up any of our space to the Schools of Hope.”
She’s also had Superintendent Ayres looking into adding vocational programs for students who may not be college bound at more than just the two current vocational schools (in Plant City and on Hillsborough Ave.).
And finally, Karen says that as a clinical social worker for children, adolescents and young adults, she has been a champion for helping find ways to improve the mental health of students across the District, “which is a big issue these days that was always swept under the rug before,” she says.
For more info or to donate to her campaign, visit KeepKarenPerez.com. At our press time, Karen’s campaign had raised $37,632, the most of the three Dist. 6 candidates.
Meanwhile, candidate Sally Harris Williamson is the only other candidate in the Dist. 6 race who previously served on the School Board.
“Miss Sally,” 75, who won the Dist. 2 runoff election in 2014 (52.53-47.47% over Michelle Popp Shimberg, after finishing a distant second to Shimberg in the Primary Election), served from 2014-18 and as the Board chair from 2018 until her term ended in Jan. 2019.
She lost her Dist. 2 seat to Stacy Hahn in 2018 and was defeated for the at-large Dist. 7 seat by Lynn Gray in a runoff in 2020.
Sally has lived in Hillsborough County since she was in the third grade and graduated from Robinson High. She was a career counselor at Monroe Middle School and then at Tampa Bay Tech before opening the Circle C Ranch Academy preschool in South Tampa. “The ‘C’ stood for ‘Circling Children with Love,” she says. “I had 180 children for 41 years.”
The school, “had a farm environment, right outside the gates of Macdill Air Force Base,” she says. “I had horses, cows, goats, sheep, chickens and pigs. The kids got to go out and collect and cook the eggs. It was for ages one to four.”
She adds that, as time went on, “it became a special needs place, just as Asperger’s and autism seemed to be exploding. When I opened it (in 1982), autism affected one child in 20. But, when I closed it (in 2023), it was one in seven.”
Sally and her husband (the late Bob Harris) ended up adopting a special needs child and she and husband M.C. Williamson have fostered as many as 100 girls in their home over the years.
“But I also got my staff fully trained,” she says. “We had occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech…we serviced the whole child. And the kids got to spend a lot of time outdoors.”
She says she realized that by the time her special needs kids graduated from high school, “they weren’t learning anything. They didn’t have any skills. When the School District received a $100-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (in 2009; primarily used to increase salaries across the District), they took the vocational programs — carpentry, auto mechanics — out of the middle and high schools and put them at just a couple of vocational centers. But, these kids and their families wanted to go to their neighborhood schools, so I ran for School Board in 2014 to try to help.”
But, Sally says, “That was a horrible time to be on the School Board. My first week on the job, I was put in a position that they were firing Superintendent Mary Ellen Elia, and my vote was the swing vote. And I had enough information to know that we were financially in trouble from trying to match that [Gates] grant, because we had to meet that grant 50-50 and the District was in the red. But they were keeping it quiet. There was just so much drama.”
She added, however, that new Superintendent of Schools Jeff Eakins got the half-penny sales tax put on the ballot, “and he said that if it passed, by the end of the ten years, the District would be out of debt, the reserves would go back up to 10% and we would not need to go after the tax again. Well, it’s on the ballot (in Nov.) to extend the tax another 10 years and I can’t wait to get in [office], dig in and find out why. I’m a tough cookie. I can get in there, pay attention and come up with creative ideas of what to do.”
Sally also says that the School District still is not prepared for the numbers of special needs children there are living in the District, “Thank heavens, we have some fabulous charter schools out there that are meeting the needs of these kids.” She adds that in order for public school districts to properly help these special needs students, “they have to have the freedom to isolate the children who can’t mainstream, but the rules will have to change to do that.”
She doesn’t know a lot of information about New Tampa’s schools in particular, not even realizing that our area’s once-overcrowded schools are now losing more and more students to nearby charter and private schools. “I think what really needs to happen, but the District is scared to do it, is redraw all school boundaries by neighborhoods. Then, you wouldn’t have to close any schools.”
For more info or to donate to Sally’s campaign, visit SallyHarris.org. At our press time, her campaign had raised $20,345, the least of the three Dist. 6 candidates.
And finally, candidate Dr. Kenneth “Ken” Gay says he is “a fifth-generation Floridian,” whose family originally settled in rural Union-Bradford County and “came down to this general area — along the Palm River.”
Ken, 67, has now been an educator for 39 years, having helped open Lopez Elementary in Seffner in 1984 and ultimately serving as the school’s assistant principal until his retirement in 2022.
“When I got out of school, I subbed a little bit and I always knew that teaching was my niche,” he says. “At first I was going to be a history major, but when I did my substitute teaching, I said, ‘No, I’m going to stick with elementary education.’”
As he was nearing the end of his long teaching career, Ken says, “It was suggested that I go into administration, that’s when I became the assistant principal [at Lopez].”
Once he retired, after working 37 summers filling in for assistant principals across the District, Ken says, “I got picked up by More Health,” a Tampa Bay-area nonprofit which delivers health and safety education to students throughout the District. “I’m still doing that at 70-80 schools throughout the summer.”
He also works for the District’s alternative certification program as a mentor for out-of-field teachers who are working with a five-year temporary teaching certificate. “So, I’ve been doing both of those and, at the same time, serving as a historical docent,” at Tampa’s Cracker Country.
Ken, who holds a Ph.D. degree in Child & Youth Studies from Nova Southeastern University, as well as graduate degrees in Educational Leadership and Elementary Education, says he decided to run for School Board (his first run was in 2024, where he finished a distant second of four candidates to incumbent Henry “Shake” Washington for the Dist. 5 seat) because, “I’ve always had an inkling that we need a better individual, a better voice on the Board. I have a lot of strengths — my doctorate, my child and youth studies — and I think I can bring that to the forefront. I just feel that we’re not going in the right direction with the individual that’s serving in this [Dist. 6] position.”
And, even though he lost in 2024, “I thought I did fairly well for an unknown running against an incumbent (Ken received 24% of the vote). “I have an understanding of the system internally and I can bring that experience to the Board.”
And, although he also didn’t know much about New Tampa’s schools in particular, Ken says that he “talks to teachers across the District all the time and many are concerned about student discipline, not necessarily in the classrooms, but on the bus, in the lunch rooms, etc. We have to be more consistent with those systems. Every building has their own procedures and routines, but are we using them faithfully? I don’t think so.”
Ken says he tells the teachers he works with to, “have high expectations for every child, but have some concrete systems for dealing with behavior and be consistent with it.”
He also says that teachers tell him that they’re “overwhelmed by all of the paperwork and compliance issues. We have to unload some of the burden on our teachers because this District is losing good teachers.”
Ken also says that the reason many good schools, including those in New Tampa, are losing students these days is because, “the charter schools are drawing them out. Parents also are unhappy with some of the politics. But, I trusted the system with my children and my daughter had an IEP (Individualized Education Program for students with disabilities), so I know that route, both as an educator and personally.” He adds that taking these special needs children out of the public school system and putting them into charter schools, “may not necessarily be the right answer either.”
Ken says that if he is elected, his biggest concerns will be, “To make sure that we are being clear with the standards for discipline, building up the morale of our teachers, holding the system accountable and making sure that we look at cost-cutting measures…have a forensic audit…to find out where it makes the most sense to cut costs.”
Among the items he says will help with cost-cutting are “[expanding] the e-bus program and we also need to get with the 21st century and look at digital textbooks. We’re spending $20-$30 million a year on textbooks. And, we need to examine the contracts we have with our vendors, see where we can cut costs there.”
For more info or to donate to Ken’s campaign, visit VoteKennethGay.com. At our press time, Ken’s campaign had raised $30,877.50, second among the three Dist. 6 candidates.