Candidate Biography (submitted by candidate):

Delcenia Turner, known as "Del," is a civic activist. She is currently a member of the Chatham County Planning Board, appointed by Commissioner Carl E. Thompson in February 2007. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, Del spent most full summers in Chatham County, NC. She attended public and private schools in both locations, graduating from Laurinburg Institute in 1967. Instead of going to college right away, Del married in January of 1970; she became a widow in 1991. Del has one daughter, Nicole, and one granddaughter, Kaitiana.

Upon returning to Chatham to live in 1992, Del threw her energy into civic activities. She received the 1995 Parent of the Year Award from the North Carolina Head Start Association, as well as an Excellence in Leadership Award from Goldston Head Start Center. She was a member of the Site-based Management Team at J.S. Waters Elementary School for several years where she was instrumental in developing the "Character Education" program, now a salient feature in every NC elementary school curricula.

Del received a $24,000 grant in 1995 from the Chatham County Partnership for Children to design and administer a parent empowerment program that addressed child abuse and neglect issues in families with children from birth to age five. The program set a precedent for parent-child interactions on various levels and introduced on-site child care. The Partnership presented her with the 1996 Outstanding Volunteer Award for her service.

I am running for a seat on the Chatham County Board of Education to help eliminate the deleterious culture developing in public schools across our nation. Only 40 years ago, the United States was ranked the number one educational system in the world, now it is ranked twelfth. Our students are intellectually unable to compete on basic levels with students from Finland, China, and many other industrialized nations. This reality is not only discouraging to our children's individual aspirations; it is injurious to our moral and economic stability.

However, I do not hold children or teachers solely or even indirectly responsible for the situation. Rather I view the lack of total community involvement and dependence on standardized tests as core reasons for the decline in our children's persistent desire to learn. If Chatham County citizens honor me with the opportunity to serve on the Board of Education, I will proactively seek to make learning a positive and desirable experience for our young people, restore teachers to their deserved venerable position in our society and encourage business and academic institutions in our community to invest in the success of every student. Public schools educate mainstream America. They are the foundation of social and economic growth in our country. If we allow them to fail, we fail generations to come.