Students & Families First
As a parent, I have all too often observed decisions being made without fully considering the impacts to our children and families. Every decision made by the school board and the administration should be evaluated by its impacts to our children and families first.
The best decisions are made by listening and engaging stakeholders at all levels to seek collaborative solutions. I will work to widen the circle of student, family, and community engagement. I will ensure your voices are heard in the board room – even if they differ from mine.
I will also ensure that your voices are heard far beyond our school district’s boundaries. I will use my experience of successfully advocating for legislation at the state and national level to advocate for policies that reflect our community’s values, to fight unfunded mandates, ensure adequate funding, and preserve local school board control.
Safely Reopen our Schools
The best place for our children to learn is on our campuses and in the classroom. As we work through this global pandemic, I will ensure our campuses are safe for our students, families, teachers, and staff so that they can get back to school.
There is much to learning that just cannot be achieved through distance learning, such as building social skills, team learning and dynamics, music, art, science, and sports. Reopening our schools will ensure we are educating the whole student.
Fiscal Responsibility
Even after a historic, decades-long economic recovery following the Great Recession, our schools have been challenged by budget difficulties. As tough as that has been, fiscal forecasts show even greater budget shortfalls in the future – and that was before the fiscal impact of the current global pandemic.
Navigating these fiscal challenges will take strength and experience. I helped lead the nation’s tenth largest city through the depths of the Great Recession. I know how to roll up my sleeves and make the hard choices we need to make – not only to survive, but to thrive – because our children’s future depends on it.
We must balance our budgets while maintaining high academic standards, preparing our students for college with AP and IB curriculum, offering the highest level of special education, and preserving athletics and the arts.
This won’t be easy – that’s for sure. But with battle-tested, proven leaders on the school board it will be possible.
Campus Safety
We must maintain safe campuses for our children. As a retired police officer, I know what it takes to make a campus safe.
Safety begins with education, partnerships and preparation. Safety is enhanced when we create and strengthen partnerships with our families, communities, other school districts, law enforcement, and our cities and county.
I will ensure that the district completes a full safety evaluation at each of our campuses and that our students, teachers and staff are properly equipped and trained to prevent and respond to the unthinkable.
I will bring my experience in building collaborative partnerships to foster an even higher level of cooperation and coordination to establish a culture of campus safety.