It is my belief that a school district should focus all available resources on the students. Excesses currently exist in the district that pull funds away from students and the benefit to the student body is questionable. Managing the districts finances starts with having reliable data, with which to make decisions. Bad data in will always lead to low-quality decisions. That’s why I think the first step in managing the districts assets starts with fixing the data flow from the district to the Board. To do this, I would recommend hiring a trained analyst that would work with the Board and the District to use the raw data to answer questions and inform decisions. The current system has led to low-quality decisions.

There are still many unanswered questions about how the District got to this point. As a Board Member, I would be honest with the community and advocate for practices that strengthen the system such as root cause analyses informing future policy. The truth sometimes may make  us look bad, but honesty and transparency will allow us to openly discuss the real problems. This will always be what is best for the District, as the district belongs to all of us.

Equity and outcomes disparity will be at the focus of policy and recommendations made by me as a board member. This demands an evidence-based approach and starts by having a detailed foundational knowledge of the demographic, socioeconomics, and educational outcomes of the district and the history that led to our present day. Using the state of where we are and the evidence-based strategies supported by the literature that narrow the achievement gap of traditionally marginalized and under-resourced groups versus well-resourced and supported groups. This is where TWI advocacy comes in. For all the money  and time spent on narrowing the achievement gap in the past 15 years in District 65, the achievement gap still widens. Two-way language immersion is an evidence based strategy proven to narrow this gap. Having robust TWI programming (not just dual language, not just ESL) is necessary for the district for multiple reasons. Mainly, taking an evidence based approach to narrowing the current achievement gap and producing language education structure that is forward-looking and, prepared to accommodate D65s fastest growing projected populations.