The Covington Independent School District is holding elections for two seats on their Board of Education.
School board members are elected to serve four-year terms. Elections occur every two years, and the number of school board members up for reelection alternates between two and three board members.
There is currently one incumbent seeking reelection, Jerry Avery. Election Day is on Tuesday, Nov. 8.
As Election Day 2022 approaches, LINK nky spoke with each candidate, offering them an opportunity to detail their background, strengths and vision for the school system.
INCUMBENTS
Jerry Avery
Jerry Avery is the only incumbent on the ballot and is seeking a third term on the Covington School Board. Avery has lived in Covington for approximately 50 years, while his wife is a lifelong resident and graduate of Holmes High School.
Avery is a retired member of the Covington Fire Department and serves as a deacon at Ninth Street Baptist Church.
The reason he is seeking reelection is because of his “desire is to try and make things better for our school district,” Avery told LINK nky.
“I’m seeking reelection because there is still work to be done,” Avery said. “We have not accomplished all of our goals yet about I just personally hate to leave a job undone. There’s still work to be done and there’s work that I’m willing to do.”
One of the biggest problems facing Covington Schools, according to Avery, is a shortage of teachers. In order to combat the issue, Avery proposes raising teaching salaries in Covington to a level on par with the rest of the United States.
“There needs to be more funds available to get our teaching salaries up with the rest of the country,” Avery said. “I seriously think that our teachers have been neglected salary-wise. That is not something that could come from the school board. That would come from a higher office than ours. That would be a major, major step in the right direction.”
Avery said his best quality as a school board member is his commitment to the voters and student personnel of the district.
“My commitment is to the students,” Avery said. “I believe all children can excel at the level that needs to be done if we make the commitment to them. It’s not going to take just school or the personnel, it’s going to take the whole community to get on board.”
His goal is to see Covington Schools become one of the top districts in the state, although he concedes there is still much work that needs to be done.
CHALLENGERS
Kareem Simpson
Kareem Simpson is a native son of Covington and graduated from Holmes High School in 1995. His family has resided in the city since the early 1900s. In fact, the only time Simpson personally lived outside of Covington was when served a 4 1/2-year stint in the United States Army as a Korean linguist.
Professionally, Simpson has dedicated his career to serving low-income individuals and families. For the past decade, he worked at Community Action Agencies in both Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, as well as for the Kenton County Public Library’s Covington branch.
He is no stranger to public service, having been a member or leader in countless organizational boards and community groups. Some of his notable titles include being an executive board member of the NKY NAACP, board member of Covington Partners and board president of Cincinnati Black PRIDE.
“I feel that I am qualified to help set policy and procedure that bolsters the success of low-income individuals and families,” Simpson said.
Simpson identified several critical issues facing Covington Schools such as teacher retention and student attendance. Simpson also thinks the expectations set for the students in the district is too low, emphasizing that accountability must return.
Simpson told LINK nky that there is “no excuse why our school district consistently ranks below most other Kentucky school districts.”
“It is true that many of our Covington students are living through poverty and have a certain set of barriers that may hinder success,” Simpson said. “But that is exactly the reason why Covington school administrators must use proven and innovative methods to help our students succeed while making decisions and setting policy based on what will help our kids to succeed and simply not what’s easiest for adults.”
If elected, Simpson said he would like to promote equity, diversity and inclusion within the district in order to increase better outcomes for all students.
“My efforts as a board member would center on strengthening the district’s long term vision to provide superb and equitable education by promoting diversity and inclusion, serving all of the children in the community; one child is no more important than another,” Simpson said. “Our strength is our diversity and we have to celebrate that diversity. Our schools are here to serve the educational needs of all the children.”
Hannah Edelen
Hannah Edelen, a former teacher at Holmes Middle School, is the youngest candidate in the race. At 24, Edelen was crowned Miss Kentucky 2022 earlier this year and is a graduate of Northern Kentucky University. She is currently studying for a Ph.D. in Education Policy and Evaluation at the University of Kentucky. She’s been a Covington resident for seven years.
Edelen originally hails from Springfield, Kentucky, a rural community over an hour southeast of Louisville. Edelen told LINK nky that a committed teacher helped show her how she could use education to help others and accomplish her goals inside and outside of her community.
She is a self-admitted supporter of the public education system and says it can provide children with a means to a better life.
“I mean in so many ways, public education can be a great equalizer,” Edelen said. “It can create a lot of wonderful opportunities for kids to change their circumstances and create a really bold and good life.”
As a former middle school teacher in Covington Schools, Edelen said she has first hand experience with how inequality can negatively affect the learning process. She has experience working with urban students through her job and rural students through her time growing up.
“There are so many inequities that exist, not only in the district in which I grew up in, but in Northern Kentucky,” Edelen said. “Teachers often go above and beyond to provide their own materials and wear many hats such as covering classes to acting as counselors. Our teachers need greater support in place. I worked with many hard-working individuals at HMS and I applaud their efforts serving the children of Covington.”
Edelen said she’d like to see more collaboration between important stakeholders in the community, more support of teachers, investing in more extracurricular opportunities for students, creating a new districtwide improvement plan and evaluating the extent of which goals were met under the previous plan.
Another solution Edelen proposes is to update the facilities such as the library, prioritize staff support and prioritize literacy, something she has past experience with from being involved with Read Ready Covington.
“We didn’t really have a functioning library,” Edelen said. “How does that environment contribute to those outcomes? We need to prioritize hiring more librarians and ensuring we have dedicated full time staff to promoting literacy.”
Valerie Rose
Valerie Rose is a resident of Latonia. Originally from Clermont County in Ohio, she moved to the area in 2016.
Rose has been a nurse for 37 years. She is a member of Moms of Liberty, a conservative nonprofit organization that advocates for parental rights in schools.
Rose told LINK nky she originally decided to run for school board because she was against the pandemic safety protocols Covington Schools put in place.
“To be quite honest, I was enraged with COVID,” Rose said. “When I saw kids being masked, kept home from school and them being encouraged to take vaccines that they don’t really need, it made me angry and sad.”
According to Rose, other issues facing Covington Schools are Critical Race Theory and gender identity. Rose said she is concerned about what her grandchildren are going to be taught in public school when they are older.
“From just doing my own research and learning what’s happening in the schools, I had no idea because we’re learning Critical Race Theory and stuff like gender neutrality,” Rose said. “Kids shouldn’t be worried about that stuff now. They need to be worried about basic life skills; basic math, reading, arithmetic, science, you know. They need to be focused on school, not on how they identify genderwise.”
Rose said she thinks there is a lot of good happening at Covington Schools but wants to “bring the pendulum back toward the center” and believes too much time and money is being invested into equity and diversity.
“At a Covington School Board meeting I went to, they were talking about equity and there was an equity person coming in, and that kind of concerns me,” Rose said. “I understand that we want to treat everybody equal, but I want to make sure that it doesn’t go to an extreme.”
Rose described herself as being “heartbroken” when she learned that many of her neighbors didn’t send their kids to Covington Schools.
Two solutions Rose proposes are to focus on curriculum that doesn’t include Critical Race Theory or Gender Studies and offering families and students more academic resources to keep Covington students in Covington Schools.
