{"id":5139,"date":"2011-10-10T06:00:39","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T10:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=5139"},"modified":"2011-11-01T16:09:24","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T20:09:24","slug":"jones-has-passion-for-school-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=5139","title":{"rendered":"Jones has ‘passion’ for school issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Region C candidate brings county fiscal management experience to candidacy<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

EDITOR’S NOTE:<\/strong> This is the first of a series of profiles of the candidates running for Unionville-Chadds Ford Board of Education.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Sharon Jones<\/p><\/div>\n

PENNSBURY \u2014 When you talk to Sharon Jones, the word \u201cpassionate\u201d comes up a lot.<\/p>\n

Particularly in talking about her kids. That might explain why the single mother of two and Republican County Committee member decided to take the plunge and seek a seat on the Unionville-Chadds Ford Board of Education. Jones is one of five candidates seeking three seats in Region C in this November\u2019s election.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople approached me to run right after the last election (2010),\u201d she said, although she had already been involved in a number of local races as committeeperson, including the 2009 race between current board vice president Frank Murphy and former board member Gregg Lindner, which Murphy narrowly won. But as family events eclipsed politics in her life for a while, she said that she put the decision process on the \u201cbackburner\u201d for a while to deal with life.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I didn\u2019t forget about it,\u201d she said. Although she\u2019s only been active in politics for three years as a committeeperson, she works for Chester County Controller Val DiGiorgio as the internal audit manager for the county. DiGiorgio was elected as the new chairman of the Chester County Republican Committee on Saturday \u2014 and was expected to resign his county post before year\u2019s end. So, in a very real sense, she notes, she knew what she was getting herself into.<\/p>\n

And in the end, she decided it made sense for her to run, in part to make sure that someone was looking out for her kids and the roughly 4,100 other kids who attended Unionville-Chadds Ford schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very passionate about my kids,\u201d she said, a theme that she returns to when chatting about the school district. \u201cI\u2019m a mom. I care about kids,\u201d she says later, again stressing her primary motivation for running.<\/p>\n

And that led her, although she typically sees herself as fiscally conservative, to support the controversial 2007 bond issue referendum to renovate Unionville High School. She says she knows a lot of her neighbors disagreed with her \u2014 but she was concerned about conditions in the building hurting education and even the safety of students.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a terrible way to learn,\u201d she said of the trailers that used to be parked outside Unionville High School and were used to make up for a lack of classroom space. \u201cAnd frankly, I was concerned about safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

That having been said, she allows that the scope of the project was probably too large and could have been trimmed to make it more palatable for the community as a whole and disagrees with the board deciding to ignore the will of the voters and to do the project virtually unchanged, despite two rejections of a bond referendum at the polls.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey could have sharpened their pencils a bit,\u201d she said of the board at that time. \u201cSome of the extras are very nice, but we probably could have gotten by without them.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the board’s members have changed (five new members have joined the board since 2009), she said she thinks that it has improved the way the district goes about its business. Jones notes that the current members of the board have done a good job of improving their communication with the public and, in general, in conducting themselves during meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a more professional atmosphere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She does reject criticism that she doesn\u2019t attend board meetings as often as some folks do.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get a little frustrated, I will be honest, when I heard my opponent say \u2018Sharon Jones never attends school board meetings\u2019 \u201cJones said. \u201cAs a single mother, I have to pick and choose what I was doing.\u201d She noted with the meetings recorded on video, she is able to keep very close track of what\u2019s going on, even if the needs of her kids kept her away from meetings at times.<\/p>\n

If elected, she said she expected to be focused on the district\u2019s bottom line \u2014 but, she stressed not just by cutting spending, but looking for creative ways to increase revenue without further burdening taxpayers. She says she plans to be a listener and always on the lookout for new ideas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a big picture kind of person,\u201d she said, citing her experience in working for Chester County in finance. \u201cYou have to be open-minded, be prepared to think out of the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

While two other incumbents, Murphy and Timotha Trigg are seeking reelection, Paul Price chose not to run for another term, meaning at least one Region C seat would be occupied by a newcomer by December. Democrats Kathleen Do and Gregg Lindner (the latter a former board member) are also seeking the seat. Murphy won the nomination of both parties in May, while Trigg and Jones are running solely as Republicans.<\/p>\n

Other Unionville-Chadds Ford School board candidate profiles:<\/p>\n

Region A<\/strong><\/p>\n

Victor DuPuis<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Region C candidate brings county fiscal management experience to candidacy EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of a series of profiles of the candidates running for Unionville-Chadds Ford Board of Education. By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com PENNSBURY \u2014 When you talk to Sharon Jones, the word \u201cpassionate\u201d comes up a lot. Particularly in talking about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[182,44,24],"class_list":["post-5139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-election-2011","tag-school-board","tag-unionville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}