Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Doug Pfaffenberger
Q: What made you decide to run for the school board?
A: As a parent and as a spouse of someone that works in the school district, I want to see a different direction that things are going and see if I could help to maybe guide it in a different direction.
Q: How are you qualified?
A: I’ve run my own business for 20 years, and I kind of see a school board as basically the managers of a big business. You want to create a good work atmosphere. Obviously, you need to budget, and you want to put out a good product, which would be productive members of society; these children, when they leave school. I think it’s not unlike running a major business.
Q: What do you see as the school board’s role in deciding what books are available in the school libraries?
A: I don’t know 100% what their role is since I’ve never been on a school board before. I think in general the school board should have more of a say in the direction of things academically. I don’t know how much of a say they should have as far as the books are concerned. But ethically and morally, I think they have a responsibility to students to be educated the right way.
Q: As a school board member, would you vote for the district to act independent of state mandates? If so, under what circumstances?
A: I think it would depend on what the mandates are and if they’re unconstitutional. If that’s the case, then absolutely. I would want to operate separately. I think it would be on a case-by-case basis.
Q: If elected, what would be your No. 1 priority?
A: A winning atmosphere. Educationally, athletically. I think that’s probably one of the biggest things is to create a team atmosphere, a winning atmosphere and it starts with staff. They have pride in the school system that we’re in.
And the children, they’re what matters. One thing that’s kind of gotten under my skin is I’ve heard excuses of why we can’t do this for the kids or why we can’t do that for the sports teams or why we can’t do it for the band, or whatever it may be. I don’t like that.
As far as running my own business for 20 years, I don’t take excuses. I like solutions.
— Compiled by Landry Sena, the Staff of the News
Cade Skinner
Q: What made you decide to run for the school board?
A: Honestly, I had some people ask me to do it. It’s been a thought that I’ve had in the past. I just never really pursued it because the guy (Savage) that was in District 1, I’ve known for a long time. When he decided to retire or come off of the school board is when I kind of decided, and I had some people call and ask if I would do it.
Q: How are you qualified?
A: When somebody comes in to run for the school board, I don’t know if anybody’s actually qualified to do it. I think it’s a learning process. I think you’re going to have to come in, check the procedures, and see how things work. So, yeah, I think it’ll be a work in progress.
I come from a family of teachers and stuff like that. I’ve been in Roosevelt County all of my life. I feel like you get to voice your opinion along with other people on what you think is needed to make the schools a better place.
Q: What do you see as the school board’s role in deciding what books are available in the school libraries?
A: I’m kind of old school. I believe that the kids should have their normal books. I’m not big on the, I guess you could call it, the woke agenda of things going around right now. These adult decisions being pushed on kids, I don’t like that. I think that’s one of the biggest things that I’m against. I believe kids should learn the history of our country and just your normal stuff.
Q: As a school board member, would you vote for the district to act independent of state mandates? If so, under what circumstances?
A: It depends on the mandates. Honestly, the state mandates when dealing with the COVID situation and how things were handled the last time, I don’t know if I would vote for the state mandates. I think that’s a battle that people would have to fight as that mandate came up. I think it would just depend on what the mandate is and how I feel about it at that time.
Q: If elected, what would be your No. 1 priority?
A: Just try to help with the public school system and try to make it a better place for the kids. Make it a place that the kids enjoy going to. It’s hard to say since this is all kind of new to me, too. So, I just think that the schools, we have the ability to make them a better place.
— Compiled by Landry Sena, the Staff of the News
