Viltz Wants to Put Impressive Resume to Work for School Board

Edward Viltz is running for the Manatee County School Board's District 1 seat this August, and he's been quite busy running a very strong and active campaign since last year. Viltz brings a strong resume with a unique blend of skills, as well as immense personal passion for improving local education.

In an increasingly-common trend, Viltz came to education later in life after a successful career in the corporate world. For over three decades, he worked as an executive, including 20 years with the IBM Corporation, where he worked in marketing, program management and executive leadership. Viltz also spent 15 years as CEO, President and Vice President with Pulsar Data Systems, Enterprise Integration Corporation, Technology Integration Solutions, and the Public Interest Registry. In Washington, D.C., he also spent time working for the Small Business Administration and the One America initiative.

When Viltz retired to Manatee County 10 years ago, it didn't take him long to realize that he wasn't going to settle into a life of tee times and country club lunches. Instead, Viltz decided he wanted to work to improve local education and began working with Team Success, a struggling, Title 1 charter school that served many at-risk students. As a consultant, Viltz helped develop and implement a strategic plan that ultimately transformed the failing school from an "F" into an "A" school between 2010 to 2013, while also personally leading numerous mentoring and extracurricular programs on campus.

Viltz also spent six years in the classroom as a math teacher, giving him plenty of first-hand experience on the teaching side of education. Having watched the Manatee School District struggle through those same years, Viltz decided he wanted to try and put some of the same skills to work in helping to improve the public school district, and saw a seat on the school board as the best way to do it.

Viltz said that one of the most satisfying parts of working with students at Team Success was seeing some of the least advantaged students in our community respond to effective educational initiatives and turn their educational experience around to the point that they could begin to see the opportunities that could exist for them. He told me he thinks there is much that can be done to ensure that the school district makes more efficient use of its current resources, including its long-beleaguered budget.


"We've got to put great emphasis on students at the earliest levels by doing everything we can to fill our voluntary pre-k programs, especially the at-risk students, and making sure we're reaching them by that critical third-grade level, because the data shows that if they are not proficient by that point, their chances of success fall dramatically."

As a board member, Viltz also says he would work hard to improve the board's functionality, which he says has been too divisive and intent on micro-managing.

"A good board understands its role in the process," said Viltz, who has served on university boards in the past. "It's not to direct the superintendent or to get involved in operational disputes like we've sometimes seen with our school board. Those areas are the responsibility of the superintendent and the other administrators."

Viltz says the school board needs to focus on budget, policy, oversight, and the "big picture" of what the district needs. He advocates using teacher panels to make sure that feedback from the classroom is making it to the board.

Hearing him speak about the issues currently facing the district, it is clear that Viltz brings not only an impressive business acumen to the conversation, but is also well-versed in educational strategies, much more so than most current and recent board members. In other words, the collective IQ of the board would certainly go up, were he to be elected.

Viltz faces a crowded field in the non-partisan race for the seat but has shown the best campaign organization so far and has been busily meeting with citizens, local stakeholders and various groups in order to make his candidacy and platform known to them. He's raised a little over $14,000 in campaign contributions, which puts him in second behind Xtavia Bailey, who has raised a little over $17,000.

Also in the race is local education activist Linda Schaich, who was a pivotal figure in exposing the 2012 financial scandal that brought the district to its knees. Schaich lost to incumbent Bob Gause in the 2012 race, though then-Superintendent Tim McGonegal had kept the budget shortfall from the board and public until after the race. Christine Howze and Gina K. Messinger have also filed to run for the seat.