Reuel Sample:
On this episode of the NHC GOP podcast.

David Perry:
I think the first thing that we need is an audit from top to bottom. And because I don’t think the school board’s getting full information, it’s just atrocious. Well, you know, I agree with you that communicate with her that communication between parents and teachers need to be improved. So if you if there’s no accountability, you’re not going to get that out. And we need a generation of critical thinkers, innovative thinkers. There’s a front and a back to this ballot. You need to fill it all out. You can’t just pick Donald Trump and you know, and pick Mark Robinson and say you’re done. You need to finish it all. We’re on the back. We’re almost the last race on the on the entire ballot. It’s got to be those three things. It’s it’s safety. It’s buildings and it’s teachers and pretty much everything else throw away.

Reuel Sample:
Welcome to the NHC GOP podcast I’m Reuel Sample joined by David Perry, one of our Republican candidates for the Board of Education. David, welcome to the podcast.

David Perry:
Thanks for having me on, Mr. Sample.

Reuel Sample:
We are getting into what everybody calls the heart of campaign season. It’s everything leading up to this day doesn’t really matter from here until November. This is it. This is the heart of the campaign. How’s it going for you out there?

David Perry:
Yeah, I took my Labor Day weekend off and it was my birthday yesterday, on Monday.

Reuel Sample:
Happy birthday!

David Perry:
And celebrated that a little bit and had a couple friends over on Saturday. But knowing that full well that there will be no fun between now.

David Perry on Searching for a New Superintendent of Schools

Reuel Sample:
The fun is over. The fun is over. Focus on the campaign, will you? But I wanted to talk about something that is that has become really, really important because the school board made a major decision of getting rid of Doctor Faust as the superintendent, which means that when you go on board on the the school board, the board of education, you guys are going to have to start looking for a new superintendent. What’s that process look like?

David Perry:
What’s it look like now? What would I like it to look like?

Reuel Sample:
Let’s, let’s let’s start with what you would like it to look like. What would you like it to look like?

David Perry:
I would really like to concentrate on, uh, not so much. Uh oh. I’ve got 12 years of experience as a superintendent or I’ve dealt, uh, you know, I’ve been in a big district, like, as big as this one or more or I’ve dealt. I mean, I’ve been in a purple, you know, county where there’s parents with different viewpoints. Uh, what’s really important, I think, is just local people who are invested in our school system. They live here, they want to contribute. They probably have children and or grandchildren living here, perhaps going to our schools, and they’re just going to care a whole lot more. Yeah. As a, you know, as a software engineer, you know, I’ve had bosses before, you know, and people that I, that I report to and the best ones that I’ve had are the ones who are, you know, software engineers themselves at one point and then decided to go up the ladder and into IT management and that sort of thing. But they understood, you know, what it took to program. They understood what the valuable resource, the programmers and the system engineers that were working for them bring to the table. And that’s the kind of thing that I was sorely lacking with Doctor Foust. It was very top down. Now, I’ve had those other bosses that are like, Doctor Foust was where it is very top down that you know, they have never worked. They probably can’t write one line of code, but, you know, they got an MBA, so they got the job. Um.

Reuel Sample:
Does it, does it does it matter if the if the new superintendent has that, that vaulted PhD after their name? Or do you just want them to be competent at running the school board?

David Perry:
Oh yeah. They need to be competent. But most of all, they need to be able to learn on the job. Uh, and because each school system is going to be a little bit different, I think in our school system is unique. It’s got a unique set of problems. It’s been mismanaged for a long, long time. Our teachers are very unhappy. Uh, our academics are very low, and we’re just getting through, you know, a couple of superintendents here in a row that have turned out to be disasters. So I think we need somebody who can learn on the job. And that’s one of the things that I did too, is, you know, people don’t know that. I mean, I got a bachelor’s degree in history, a master’s degree in education, worked a little bit in special education for three years, and then I switched over to the IT industry. But I taught myself. I learned on the job for 29 years. I learned how to do it and became a valuable asset to the companies that I work for. And that’s the same kind of thing we need to see from our our superintendent candidates. We we need to find somebody who’s going to think like us, who has the same vision, strategic vision and goals that our school board does. Because if we have somebody like Doctor Faust, who is, you know, a complete leftist and completely disagrees with us and is going to try to do his own agenda as opposed to the school board’s agenda. It’s never going to work. We need somebody that we can count on, that we can trust. That’s going to be work with us in order to solve our school district’s problems.

Reuel Sample:
There are a lot of school districts, I would not say a lot. There are some school districts around the country with larger populations of larger populations of students than we do, that have replaced the title of superintendent of schools to CEO of schools, which indicates that their job is not to take care of everything, but to run and to manage, just like a, like a in a, in a corporation that the CEO carries out the desires of the board. You are looking for somebody who’s going to run this district properly.

David Perry:
Absolutely. And in the best, CEOs are the ones that can get people below them. They can’t know everything. They’re on the top land, but they get the people below them that are working, and they listen to the people below them and get those levels of communication going up and down. And that’s when the best companies and the most innovative companies are that have that kind of up and down open communications, and those are the ones that were most successful. And I think the same thing would translate into a school district, uh, as opposed to some, you know, somebody who’s just, you know, I’m superintendent. I’m the boss.

Reuel Sample:
What’s once again, the superintendent, his or her job is to carry out the policies that you on the board set forth. The CEO is not the superintendent is not an elected position. His job is to carry out the policies that you folks put forward. And the problem with the last couple is that they did not do that.

David Perry:
No, and I don’t think they did, and I don’t think they were much help. Uh, and I also think that, you know, it’s not just policies, you know, policy number 3501, it’s the general what are we trying to do here? What is the strategic plan we got? You know, when you write these policies, you know, they’re all like little bulleted items on the on the list and they’re great and fine, but they don’t elaborate on what you’re really trying to do here. You need to get much more detailed, and we need somebody who’s going to work with us to get those kind of detailed plans. Take it from the 60,000 foot view and then, you know, and be able to like, okay, this is how we’re going to get there.

Reuel Sample:
So this is all about we talk about policies. We talk about superintendents. We talk about all of this stuff. But it really comes down to making sure that we have quality education for our kids. And that is a big concern of yours, because you are a big critic, and probably rightly so, of the quality of education that our kids are getting right now in New Hanover County.

Quality of Education

David Perry:
Yeah, I mean, it is our, our most kids aren’t reading at grade level. They’re not they’re not on grade level for math, uh, history, American civics. It’s just atrocious. They’re there, walking out there. They couldn’t even most of them couldn’t pass a test for American citizenship. It’s that bad. And you know, it’s not preparing them. We have teachers. I remember you were talking to Nikki a couple of podcasts ago, and, you know, you were asking, why are these kids that are getting into these programs at the community college being able to to make it there? But. Well, you know, I agree with you that communication with her, that communication between parents and teachers need to be improved. But I think the real problem is we’re not even demanding competence, never mind excellence. So if you if if there’s no accountability, you’re not going to get that. If you’re just going to pass the kid to the next grade level and there’s no repercussions for the teacher where, you know, wow, everybody in your class failed or okay, here’s here’s a raise for next year. I mean, that doesn’t work. We need I don’t want to be too harsh. Everybody has different students, but and they have different, you know, strengths and weaknesses, but we hope that each teacher can be able to bring their teacher from where they are up to another level, even if that’s with kids who are a little bit harder to teach.

Reuel Sample:
How do we get kids up to competence in their in their grades. We have kids who are graduating from high school who are not reading at the high school level. They’re certainly not doing math at a high school level. How do we get them there?

David Perry:
Yeah, and I think the biggest thing is, is more teachers in smaller classroom sizes. I mean, that’s what it really comes down to. I mean, you got 30 kids in a class. It’s tough if you’re a teacher and the teacher aides, it can be a little bit of an assistance. You know, there’s some people that have gone around saying, you know, let’s go to the AI and the computer based learning, and that can help a little bit. And those things can be a little bit of an aid, but they’re not going to replace a teacher. And that’s what we really have to fiscally. That’s what we have to try to fix, is to get more qualified, good teachers and retain the good ones, not just, you know, the good ones just leave. We want the good ones to stay and to give them enough money so they will stay. And that’s why things like my performance based, uh, bonus, uh, maybe idea going through the endowment fund would be a good idea as far as retaining those people. But we need to have more money in order to have those people.

David Perry:
But in my mind, I’m a fiscal conservative. So if it’s not, if we don’t really, really need it, we shouldn’t be really, really having it. Especially when we’re lacking in other things, like enough teachers. I mean, it should be the big three for me. Are you got enough teachers? Our schools safe and our our buildings up to code. And you know, in safe as well. You know, we can’t. Those three are the most important things that we can do with our money, all that other stuff like hiring a zillion psychologists and social emotional learning and, you know, all these other those that may be nice to have, but they’re they’re not the core of what we’re supposed to be doing, which is to teach children. And this is what the Democrats don’t get. They’re into this whole child model where where your school district is practically a co-parent, and they want to provide everything from free breakfast and lunch to why don’t you have the dentist come to the school and start giving checkups? I mean, maybe that’s next, I don’t know, but.

Reuel Sample:
Well, it’s you’re right. And we were talking about some things before the podcast is that the Democrats are constantly talking about these programs that have no impact on the educational standards of kids. It’s that they they, they might make them feel good or they might make their self-esteem increase somehow. But they’re not focused on educational achievement. It almost seems that educational achievement is the opposite of what they’re trying to get to.

David Perry:
Right. And I don’t even know necessarily whether the teachers want it. I think maybe most teachers would actually just like to teach. Yeah. But this is kind of being forced on us by a school administration that has come, has become kind of it’s big government bureaucracy on its own with lots of moving parts. And I’ve talked to, you know, a couple of school board members that are currently on the board now, and they’ve almost resigned themselves to thinking this is just a huge mess, but we’ve got to get in there and fix that and streamline it into that kind of innovative corporation model that we were talking about before.

Reuel Sample:
People think that elections, especially on these big year elections, that it’s all about the white House, and that’s where all the change comes from. But it really is here at the granular level, the school board and the county commission. This is where the change really starts, isn’t it?

David Perry:
Yeah. We and personally I’ve been telling people, I think this is the most important election on your ballot. Besides, I mean, no, no swipe to the commissioners race. That’s important too, because it’s local. But this is your kids. This is your grandkids. This is the future. I mean, we screw up here. The next 30, 40 years could be screwed up. I mean, if we vote the wrong person into, you know, commissioners. Well, four years later, maybe we could fix that. So.

Reuel Sample:
Well, as I was talking with Nikki and with Natosha, is that your other Republican candidates is that these are folks who are going to be your doctor in 20 years. These are going to be the folks who are running for county commission or for school board themselves, or a one of a million other things. And if they’re not getting a good education now, they’re not going to be successful later on now.

David Perry:
And it just doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on that. You know, why are we trying to get our, you know, our teachers to be like, you know, part time psychologists? I mean, I’m not saying that certain kids don’t need a psychologist, but that’s not our job as a school system. We should be past referring them to, you know, the appropriate help that they need in order to get that. But, you know, we’ve got to and we don’t need to be social workers and everything else that you thought the kids don’t need social workers. But, you know, we have to concentrate on doing our one job well and get laser focused on that. And I just don’t see it happening. And I want to get it happening. And I’m pretty sure that Nikki and Natosha do, too. I mean, it, we we’re going to graduate a generation of dummies here unless we fix things pretty soon here.

A Liberal Arts Education

Reuel Sample:
So if if you could change one thing in the quality of of our education for our kids, what would be your top priority that you think would be the most effective in getting our kids ready to be effective citizens?

David Perry:
As far as the as far as the academic curriculum or as far as, uh, the, um, as far as, you know, changes to the teachers or salaries academic curriculum.

Reuel Sample:
Let’s, let’s, let’s keep it down there in the classrooms. What, what? Yeah, I’m.

David Perry:
A big believer in a traditional liberal arts education, and I’d like to see it in the high school, because really, it helps to get you to learn how to think. And and you need to obviously learn the reading and you need to learn the writing, but you need to be able to think for yourself. And there’s, uh, and to be able to evaluate ideas, evaluate stuff, uh, different opinions from varying sources and be able to, you know. Hey. What? Wait a minute. That sounds a little fishy. And to make logical arguments. And we need a generation of critical thinkers, innovative thinkers. And that’s the one thing I would probably change. Now, not every kid is going to go to college. They don’t need to. But everybody should be able to walk out with a graduation cap on and be able to, you know, be a well informed citizen who isn’t just going to be, you know, the next lemming who’s going to fall off the cliff from whatever the whatever the pied pipers of the Democrats are telling them to do.

Reuel Sample:
You use that term liberal arts education. And I think we need to define that. A liberal arts education is not about being a liberal, and it’s not about arts. In particularly liberal and liberal arts, education is a philosophy in education that teaches critical thinking in all subjects.

David Perry:
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, a lot of people don’t. If they’re not familiar with the term, they might think, oh yeah, he’s a big liberal, a classical liberal term probably, you know, but that’s, you know, a hundred years old, not the term liberal that we think of today, you know.

Reuel Sample:
So imagine, imagine if we started graduating students who started questioning because that’s at the heart of a liberal arts education is the ability and the desire to question. And right now we don’t see that a lot.

David Perry:
Yeah, that’s I think that’s the most important thing. And if you question then whatever when they graduate, whatever field they get into, whether it’s, you know, going to going, going to the community college and picking up a trade or going on to, you know, to a college degree or even a master’s degree or a doctor or whatever they want to do whatever. If they have that kind of built in what if mentality, I mean, they’re going to be successful. They’re not just going to be, you know, I can do the job. I’ve been taught the skills. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Robot. They’re actually going to be able to be innovative and to be leaders in their fields and not just followers.

Fiscal Responsibility

Reuel Sample:
Let’s talk a little bit about fiscal responsibility. This is all great stuff. But we need to pay for it. And we pay for it by taxation and other and other ways. How do we make sure that the dollars that we demand from the citizens of New Hanover County are properly utilized?

David Perry:
I think the first thing that we need is an audit from top to bottom. And because I don’t think the school boards get the full information, they’re not getting the line items all the way down. They’re getting some broad brush that they give them, you know, and you don’t even know half the details. What’s going on, how much is being spent on DEI programs and SEL programs? It’s all kind of hidden in these little notches, you know. And again, the school board is paying $13,000 a year. That’s how little it pays. And really, it’s it was intended to be a part time job. If you had to start going through line item budgets and start, I mean, this turns into a full time job in a hurry for $13,000. Most people probably would want to do it.

Reuel Sample:
There’s no such thing as a part time job in politics. Is that is that this is a full time job and you’re getting paid a part time wage because there’s there’s really no stepping away from this.

David Perry:
Yeah. But again, that’s where I think, you know. And I’ll just go back to it for a second. Then we’ll get back to the main thing is this is where it’s important to have that good superintendent. Yeah. Somebody who’s going to be able to do that you can trust is going to give you those numbers. They’re going to be accurate. He’s he’s not going to try to hide stuff in different ledger columns. You’re going to get the full story.

Reuel Sample:
So the New Hanover County Commission just passed its budget. And they have sent a lot of money towards the board of Education. The North Carolina Republican controlled legislature last year, or maybe it was this year, last year passed a biennial budget that increased teacher pay and increased master pay for teachers, and so on and so forth. How are we going to implement that? What is the best way to get that here in New Hanover County?

David Perry:
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is, is we have to how are we going to get that money here?

Reuel Sample:
Yeah. And how’s the best way to use it?

David Perry:
Oh, how the best way to use it. Yeah. I mean, again, it’s it’s got to be those three things. It’s its safety, its buildings and its teachers and pretty much everything else throw away. And because it all comes with strings, no matter what bucket of money you think you’re grabbing. This is part of the bureaucracy problem at a school district. Well, that’s a free grant from over here. And this is belief that, you know, money grows on all these government trees and we just go grab it.

Reuel Sample:
You’ve mentioned school size and school buildings a few times. And other candidates running for county commission and school board have mentioned we’ve got some we’ve got some school buildings that are old and getting overcrowded. How do we how do we address that as more and more people come to New Hanover County with their kids?

Overcrowded Schools

David Perry:
Yeah. I mean, I think I think John Hinnant is on target here, I think we’re probably going to need another another high school. You know, people have said, you know, well, the population is kind of the school population is hanging around 25,000 for the last few years. But I think it’s only it’s I think people have been moving to the area and not just retirees. Um, maybe they’ve been going to Pender County or Brunswick because they kind of maybe get a better deal on housing. But, you know, those prices are catching up with New Hanover prices. So I think we’re going to start seeing an influx of families with kids who are going to be school aged. So I think our school population is going to go up. Plus, I think we like you said, there’s class, the classroom size, the actual physical classroom has to be there has to be enough space. You can’t cram them all into one little thing. Now, obviously, if you want to have more separate spaces, if you want to have smaller classes like 15, 20 instead of 30, then you need more classrooms and they might be able to be a little bit smaller, but you still need all of them. So I think investing in that is an investment in the right direction. And obviously as far as, you know, kids being safe. I think, you know, we we need to, you know, security systems. Maybe we need some more school resource officers, I believe at least armed school resource officers in case the worst happens. And there’s an active shooter situation because we have a responsibility to protect the kids and the and then to educate them. And those are the two things that we were really charged to do. We’re not charged to do all these other things, but we’re charged to do those two things.

Reuel Sample:
We’ve already had some incidents in the schools already. Fights and other incidents that required the use or should have required the use of SROs. Are you in favor of increasing SROs, school resource officers or policemen in schools? And you and you’re saying they should be armed as well?

David Perry:
Yeah. I mean, just in case. I mean, I don’t want to get into the other whole armed teacher thing like we talked about before. That’s an idea. But right now that would set the General Assembly would have to pass. What we can do here on the school board is we can hire more school resource officers. Okay. And armed ones. So I think that that would be an excellent idea. I think that’s a little bit more expensive than the other idea. But hey, we got to do what we can in order to keep our safe kids safe. And you know, if that means a few extra bucks, then. So be it.

DEI Has No Place In Schools – Or Anywhere!

Reuel Sample:
We talked a little bit about DEI. For those folks who don’t know what. DEI is DEI is diversity, equity and inclusion. And it’s it is a it is a it is a philosophy that has gotten into schools in a really it’s almost like a virus. Here’s Charlie Kirk on DEI.

Charlie Kirk:
Anybody in power should get rid of Dei immediately. DEI is a Marxist program that has infiltrated. It is anti-white, institutionalized. And Elon Musk is now one of the most anti DEI spokespeople of the West. And praise God for Elon of doing that. He says DEI should be rearranged to DIE because it is saying it is dying. Look, Elon Musk calls diversity, equity, inclusion morally wrong. Propaganda words for racism, sexism, changing the target class doesn’t make it right. Good for you, Elon Musk. We need more people with wealth and with power and a platform to speak out against DEI.

Reuel Sample:
Is he right? Is this one of the ways that Marxism and racism is getting into our schools is through these these programs that seem really, really innocuous?

David Perry:
I do believe that’s true. Um, you know, whether every cog in the machine is aware of their participation in this grand scheme, you know, maybe not. You know, maybe they think they’re just doing right by everybody. So I don’t want to hold every teacher, you know, waving a D flag and calling them a Marxist. But I think inherently, I think that’s the philosophy behind it. If you look at, you know, the academics behind it, uh, I mean, it really just uses, um, you know, race as a divisive thing. And it judges people by their skin color or whether they belong to this certain group or that certain group, and, you know, and who gets to pick the groups, you know, the people on the left, I guess And instead of me. My philosophy is, yeah, there’s diversity. Of course there’s diversity. Every single one of us, whether they’re white, black, whatever color skin they are, whether they’re boys or girls or whether they like dance or sports. I mean, they’re all made in God’s image and they’re all diverse. Judy Justice posted something recently how she was so proud that the US women’s gymnastics team was so diverse, and the reason she pointed out it was diverse because it was, you know, three black women and one Oriental woman and one white woman. And like, I’m like, but that’s the only reason she celebrated it. And it’s like, I would tell you right here, right now, if it was five white women up there, they would all be diverse. They would all have unique stories to tell and unique turmoils and things that they had to endure to get to where they went. I mean, I just think it is. So, uh, pitting one group against another, and it’s it’s a way for the Marxists to kind of, hey, we need to throw off this, the idea of individualism, the idea of meritocracy, and go to this communist system. And I think that’s the ultimate goal in the back. Now, like I said, every pawn in the game may not know that they’re a member of this, but.

Reuel Sample:
What I find most insulting about, uh, Ms Justice’s post is that she looks she posts a picture of those five women, and you can go to Facebook to find it. She posts a picture of those five women and she hails it as a success, a triumph of diversity. And I look at it as a triumph of athletic ability, because they wouldn’t be there if they weren’t the best of the best. And I think that’s insulting to anybody at that level.

David Perry:
Yeah, and I do too. I mean, it’s like, wow. And then, you know, you just open it. And when you praise that, instead of praising their athletic ability, you know, then you bring in the you bring in the charges well, this was a DEI selected team and everybody. Oh, no. Come on. I love how everybody is the supports you know, diversity equity and inclusion. All of a sudden doesn’t like it when it’s when people have been around saying that you know come out Harris was a pick.

Reuel Sample:
But where where we have we have the president on tape saying that he was going to pick a black woman for his. He didn’t mention anything about about ability. She was a DEI. And that’s why it’s she’s such a mess. I think that our schools are meant to be accelerating the achievement of all of our kids so that they can be successful regardless of race or gender.

David Perry:
I thought it should matter to me. You know, your skin color or whatever. To me, that should just be as irrelevant as the color of your eyes or the color of your hair. God, I mean, it’s great, but that doesn’t make one better than the other. And, uh, and so when I look at it, I think I wrote a post about this. It’s like, you know, Doctor King, you know, he wanted that colorblind society. And how can we at least start? Can we at least have a colorblind school district? Truly, instead of pitting all the students and, you know, oh, you’re a white privileged and you’re black and you’re this, that and the other thing. No, we should be treating it doesn’t matter. All these kids are made in the image of God. They’re all diverse. And let’s just treat them as equals. And if Doctor King can say that, you know, over 60 years ago, then you think that we can finally get there by now.

Reuel Sample:
There’s a there’s a candidate for governor who said that. One of the problems with Dei is that it holds people to low standards. Is that oh, no, you’re not you’re not going to succeed because you’re black. And so we’re going to give you a, we’re going to give you a, an artificial push up so that you can succeed, which is insulting to no matter who you are. And what you are pushing for is excellence in education, no matter who, no matter where you’re coming from.

David Perry:
What you’re really saying is that you can’t do or because of the color of your skin. You can’t do the job. And, you know, maybe, you know, pre-Civil Rights Act days back in the 50s and that argument held some water, but I don’t think that’s the case any longer at all.

Supporting David Perry

Reuel Sample:
So we’re talking to David Perry, who is running for the Board of Education, and I call it the school board, just because that’s who I am. Uh, David, this is expensive. It’s not supposed to be, but the Democrats are getting millions of dollars funneled into our little county from outside. How can people support your candidacy?

David Perry:
Yeah, we really do need it. I know, for I can’t tell you what kind of money Judy Justice is getting or Jerry Jones as now I’m going to imagine this a lot. They filed Q2 reports to name some of, uh, what they had done up through June, I believe. Or maybe it was July. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when the that’s all the numbers that we have, and those are the numbers that we will receive before the election is over, we won’t know who gave what to who until after the election as far as the last 3 or 4 months. Um, but up to After Q2, Tim Marek had raised well over twice as much as me, Natosha or Nicki, and a lot of it came from out of state. And I bet you there’s a whole lot more other organizations that are going to start giving them money. Socialist organizations, Planned Parenthood, you name it. I can’t prove it, but I know I think it’s on the way. And, you know, guess what? We don’t we’re not, you know, our school board candidates. We tend to be kind of on the low end of the totem pole as far as getting donations go. You know, I mean, there was a time probably not that long ago, ten, 15 years ago. I mean, I think Charlie Miller told us to me, you know, he ran for he was a member of the Brunswick County School Board for many years before he became a representative at the General Assembly in the House of 19. And he said, yeah, I think it cost me $1,000 the first time I ever heard of something. That was it.

Reuel Sample:
And it’s not that way anymore. $1,000 won’t even get you on the road So.

David Perry:
So we need to get the people can get what they can if they can go to Perryforeducation.com and just do whatever they can. And uh, and you know, if you can’t do it, I know people are in a crunch and uh, so even even if you can only do so much, you know, let your friends know. See if they can help out, too, you know, or maybe throw me a little fundraising party in the next few weeks.

Reuel Sample:
There you go. So, and on on that website, Perry, for schools, you you have.

David Perry:
It’s a Perry for education.

Reuel Sample:
Perry for education. That’s right. Perry for education. We’ll make sure that’s in the show notes is that you have a lot of your issues and the things that you’re standing for just nicely bulleted out is that when they vote for you, they know what they are voting for.

David Perry:
Yeah. I mean, I think I’m the most, uh, you know, this board it out, but then you can drill down and get into the details. I really try to get into a lot of detail. If you want that much detail about some of my ideas and you can drill down. There’s issues pages for all these things. You know, unlike what the Democrats are doing, they’re basically concentrating on a bunch of issues like, you know, private school vouchers and charter schools and the Leandro case. These are issues that are up to the General Assembly. So why why are they talking about those issues? They can’t do anything about them. And yet that’s all they’re talking about. They have no solutions at all.

Reuel Sample:
Yeah. Well they never have solutions. They, they it’s great talking about those things, but they never really have have good solutions. But you’ve got some events coming up. One of the biggest ones is, uh, making waves uh, Thursday out at the aquarium. Isn’t that right?

David Perry:
Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. That should be a beautiful evening. And, uh, I know they’ve done a lot of work to put that together for all of us local candidates, so I will definitely be there with the table. Come see me there, and I’ll be happy to answer all your questions. And of course, I would be happy to take your money if you have to.

Reuel Sample:
That’s right. That’s. If you don’t know about making waves is that this is a sponsored by the New Hanover County Republican Party, where we’ve got a space reserved at the aquarium. We’ve got all of our candidates coming in, and they are not up on a on a platform or a podium or anything else. They are there at the tables just waiting to talk to people. And, and, uh, you know, podcasts generally are a little bit sterile, but, uh, they’re going to our candidates are going to be right there. Ask them no matter. Ask them whatever you want. Is that right, David? You’re ready to ask to answer the question.

David Perry:
Ask me whatever I want. Well, I mean, maybe don’t ask me about, you know, my my personal life from my childhood, but I mean, the school board.

Reuel Sample:
And if you do ask him that, he. He’ll probably talk about that anyway. Anyway, so, uh, what else do you have coming up, David?

David Perry:
Uh, yeah. And then we’ve got a couple of debates coming up. Uh you know, I recently spoke at the New Hanover branch of the NAACP, and they’re actually I think that went well. I mean, I may not you know, some people have written off that, you know, our black citizens who belong there. I think there are a lot of people who are encouraged by what I said, you know, maybe not the leadership, but you don’t have to reach everybody. You just have to reach enough. And I think I had several people came to me afterwards and said that they liked what I had to say. So, um, and there the NAACP is sponsoring kind of a virtual debate, and that will be online. And then we’re going to have another one at the um, I think it’s mid we’ve got one for WHQR. And then we also have another one I just found out about. They’re going to be doing a panel discussion up at UNC, the Watson School of Education as well.

Reuel Sample:
Very good. So again these debates are great, great ways for the public to suss out your stance on these things in comparison to the Democrats who are running. There are three open spots. Three, three great Republicans versus three Democrats who are just they’re the same old, same old. It’s the same old failed policies of the Democrats.

David Perry:
Yeah. I haven’t I haven’t heard one innovative idea. It’s sad you would think. And I hope you know, that I can work with anybody, you know, regardless of what party affiliation they have. I’m going to think what I think. And I and most of the time it’s going to agree with the Republican official or Republican position. But, you know, I’m willing to listen to everybody and work collaboratively, as long as it’s for the good of our schools and getting actual accomplishments happening on the ground.

Reuel Sample:
So and I think that ability to work with all sides of the aisle and at least listen to ideas and thoughts and complaints is the sign of a mature statesman. And that’s what you are bringing to the Board of Education is a maturity to listen. Dave Perry. I’m going to give you the the last word for our podcast tonight.

David Perry:
Well, I thank you. And I just I hope that you will go out and help my campaign, not just money wise, but actually coming involved. Uh, contact, uh, contact me versus our website, my campaign managers. Noah Campbell, great young man, very enthusiastic. We need some, you know, boots on the ground. We’ve got, what, 2 or 3? Two and a half weeks of early voting. And, you know, we got to get your friends out there. And also be sure to tell all of your friends there’s a front and a back to this ballot. You need to fill it all out. You can’t just pick Donald Trump and you know, and pick Mark Robinson and say you’re done. You need to finish it all. We’re on the back. We’re almost the last race on the on the entire ballot. Make sure you finish your ballots. Tell people to finish your ballots because it’s so, so these local races, like you said, even our commissioner races and the school board races are so very important and actually affect local citizens a lot more than some of these national races.

Reuel Sample:
You know, flip over that ballot, you know who you’re going to vote for at the national level, Flip over the ballot and start from the back and then move towards the front. Is that a good idea? Yeah. Just we we need every Republican to vote for every Republican. And we can maintain that that majority on the school board. We can maintain the majority on the on the county commission. We can take back the white House and increase our increase our majority in the House and take back the Senate. But we have to vote for everything as Republicans.

David Perry:
Oh, yeah, and absolutely. But don’t don’t ignore our, our your your your unaffiliated neighbors Make sure that you have a conversation with them. They might not be officially Republicans, but a lot of them are conservative, especially when it comes to their kids. You know, it’s one thing to have a bunch of liberal policy ideas when it’s pie in the sky at the national level. And it’s another thing when it’s happening to your kid at your local school and they don’t want it.

Reuel Sample:
The website is Perry for, and that’s spelled out for education.com, where you can find out more about David as he’s running for your local board of education here in New Hanover County. You can also support him financially there and find out more about what he plans on doing. David Perry, thanks for joining us on the podcast.

David Perry:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

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