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Wichita BOE Candidates Stress Importance Of Technology In Schools

Deborah Shaar
/
KMUW
Peter Grant (third from the right) and Mike Rodee (far right) are running for the District 5 seat on the Wichita Public Schools Board of Education.

The current Wichita Public Schools Board of Education president is facing one opponent in the race for District 5.

Voters will decide next month if Mike Rodee gets a second term on the board or if challenger Peter Grant takes his place.

The District 5 candidates agree that bringing the latest technology to Wichita schools is important and necessary.

"I believe that we need to bring more and better technology in the classroom, not just in the technology classes, but in every class from English to math to social studies to science," Peter Grant said during a forum hosted by high school students last week.

"When my kids were in school, robotics weren’t even part of this education and now it’s a big part," Mike Rodee said. "Nobody heard of cybersecurity five years ago. Those types of programs are needed."

Rodee and Grant also said they would like to increase student internship opportunities and district partnerships with businesses.

Rodee was first elected in 2012. This is Grant’s second campaign for a Board of Education seat.

Both candidates are longtime residents in Wichita and have children who graduated from Wichita Public Schools.

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Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar

To contact KMUW News or to send in a news tip, reach us at news@kmuw.org.

Deborah joined the news team at KMUW in September 2014 as a news reporter. She spent more than a dozen years working in news at both public and commercial radio and television stations in Ohio, West Virginia and Detroit, Michigan. Before relocating to Wichita in 2013, Deborah taught news and broadcasting classes at Tarrant County College in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area.