Serena Johnson:
How has your background prepared you for this office?
Dennis Dinge:
Well, I'm a scientist and a lot of this stuff I want to get into for the public education commission, which, as you know, approves and regulates charter schools. It’s looking at the data and things like that, and I think I would be good at that. I was a college professor. I've been in the classroom. I know what it's like to teach kids, and I have a good idea of what a prepared high school student looks like when they get to college. I've had two of my children go to a charter school; they went to Cottonwood Classical. I have a third one that hopefully will be going in a couple years. And I get feedback about public schools from my wife who, as we speak, is teaching at a public school. She teaches water conservation for the water authority, and it's useful just having conversations with her.
Serena Johnson:
What are the top issues facing your district?
Dennis Dinge:
I think any district can use more charter schools in niches that haven't been addressed yet. What I'm looking for in new charter schools is things that will make kids excited about what they're learning. And, of course, every charter school has to do the basics – reading, writing, arithmetic and all that stuff – but also, it may add that thing that kids really want to do. In my district, and I think every district, we have to be a bit careful as we add these charter schools, these public charter schools, that funding doesn't drop for public schools in general. And so, that's always a concern as well.
Serena Johnson:
What are your proposed solutions to those issues?
Dennis Dinge:
Well, you know, when I worked at the labs, I used to work at Sandia Labs, there were always things the labs would come up with that would be good for private industry in general, and you would have to transfer it. And, you know, a lot of people talk about charter schools being where we experiment, where we transfer things. I don't see that transfer necessarily happening, and it can't be another task for regular public-school teachers. There needs to be a group or entity in charge of that; that's how the labs do it, and I think that's how the public schools should do it as well. That's something that I think I would be good at addressing. And it doesn't even have to be just curriculum type things; it could be a charter school explores ways to get rid of too much documentation and all the other outside-of-teaching things that teachers have to do.
Serena Johnson:
All right, and what else is important for voters to know about your campaign?
Dennis Dinge:
I'm a candidate with the Forward Party. We're a new party. And you've gone into the voting booth, and you look up and down the ballot, and there's just one name on all these races; you don't really have a choice. And what we want to do is give people good choices in those races, and that's one of the goals of the Forward Party. We're going to run people who fit their districts. We don't really have an ideology beyond being willing to work across the aisles, follow the rule of law, you know, those types of things. And I think that's needed because right now, there's too little competition, and if you believe in competition, and you believe competition makes things better, I think we need the Forward Party. And I think Democrats and Republicans need competition as well. It will make them better.
