D65 PTA Council School Board Candidate Questionnaire

I was catalyzed to engage with the Board and District administration through their mishandling of the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies. Unfortunately, this has been an ongoing issue for years at this point and I have been engaged throughout. While following and participating in these processes, I have identified many areas for improvement in Board governance and decision-making processes. My skills and experience are an excellent fit for the Board- I am a collaborator, a listener, and a problem solver. I will push for refined processes on the Board, such as improving the quality of information transmission from the District to the Board, committing to meaningful community engagement and outreach, and strengthening decision-making processes. The Board’s primary role in shaping Board policy is to ensure the District administration and activities are aligned with the strategic plan and that resources are being responsibly allocated so our educators can use their expertise and training to do the day to day job of fostering academic excellence for the 6408 students of the district.

Volunteer experiences:

• Bessie Rhodes PTA Secretary

• D65 Advocacy Network

• Multiple school event planning committees

• Community outreach to BR families including surveys

• Speaking at multiple D65 Board meetings

• Service learning trips (El Salvador, Peru, NYC)

• Hospice Volunteering 

• Military service

• AYSO soccer coach 

Volunteer experiences have shaped every aspect of my life including helping to develop problem-solving strategies, interpersonal relationships, and defining my vision to serve others. Most applicable to the school board, I worked with a board consisting of physicians and pharmacists to shape medical policies for the State of Colorado. These decisions impacted millions of Medicaid members and were subject to the guidelines set forth by the Colorado Sunshine Laws and the Open Meetings Act, similar to policies that govern Board decisions. My most applicable experiences have been volunteering within the district with the Bessie Rhodes community. Not only have I gained a depth of knowledge about district procedures and Board decisions, but the experience of attempting to influence the process has teased out many areas for improvement in terms of Board governance. For example, when the Board voted to reduce the size of the new 5th Ward school to a K-5 from a K-8, I presented data-informed rebuttals to the several reasons the Board and District used to tie the Dr. Bessie Rhodes School of Global Studies to the 5th Ward school construction. Through this process, I learned that a functional Board needs to be responsive to the voice of the public and follow data-driven decision-making processes.

All resources need to be focused on academic excellence. The district is at 69% enrolled capacity, while the target ranges from 80-85%. Enrollment needs to be balanced for budgetary reasons while also ensuring that students have enriching environments with active extracurricular activities. Fortunately, I think if we look at the whole district from the cost per student per year perspective, we can strengthen the budgetary status while building our communities, instead of dividing them. For instance, when the Foster school opens, up to 20% of the students at King Arts could shift to that school, thereby ballooning the cost per student per year at King Arts. The District administration and Board have only recently began to speak about these downstream effects of opening and closing schools, but allowing this to occur for several years without being addressed will delay appropriate budgetary balancing. Once we reach financial balance and goals for school capacity, any budgetary surplus can be used to reduce risk on existing debt through restructuring and to ensure that our interventionist teams are strong across the district. Many of the top 10 highest impact factor strategies to narrow education gaps are interventionist-mediated and interventionists (behavioral and academic) have been reduced in the past several years.

The system may be well intentioned but the rollout has been poor and communication with families and teachers lacking. It should be very clear what a student has to do in order to get the EX and ME scores and the parents/teachers/students should be better educated. I think a grading system training document for use at parent teacher conferences could be centrally developed by admin and reviewed with parents at the parent teacher conferences, taking 3-5 minutes. These trainings could review basic SBG   information, what the student needs to improve upon, what they can do to get better scores, what they are doing well at, and any other information that may inform high-school readiness. Receiving an EX score should be obtainable and how to do it should not be a mystery. The district needs to be explicit, informed, and intentional about decisions like SBG being made and follow through with strong and informed implementation.

The initial step for appropriately advocating for marginalized populations is to identify them and learn about the systemic disparities that negatively impact them. Through school liaison groups, personal availability with open office hours, and general engagement with the district and individual schools, I will actively seek information on these systemic disparities. Once disparities are identified, they can be discussed further and plans and policies can be developed to attempt to ameliorate them. Special interest groups and other relevant stakeholders will be brought to the conversation to help with the development of policy and durable remedies. All students must be represented appropriately and provided with the supports that they need in order for them to achieve at their highest potential.

We need to have clear goals surrounding the use of technology in the classroom. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) identifies goals that offer a good point of reference. The use of technology in District 65 with the 1:1 device distribution policy is experimental, and the impact is not well studied- we need to protect our children from potential harms of the use of technology while capturing any benefits. The ISTE has guidance with respect to internet safety education and privacy that are important. We also need to continually ask the question: “what are the children missing when they are engaged with technology?” From observing my children’s classrooms and discussing with the teachers, we need to be mindful of the possibility that children could be missing out on social time, creative play, problem solving in groups, and reading paper books, among many other important activities. I am in support of re-evaluating how technology is used in the classrooms and think it is an important priority for all districts.

Rebuilding trust with the families of D65 is a high priority. First, the Board and District need to acknowledge the mistakes that have been made. Then we need to develop strategies and/or policy that would prevent these mistakes from happening again. One of the main ways that the trust will be rebuilt is by practicing good governance going forward and maintaining transparency surrounding hiring of the superintendent and budgetary decisions. The community needs to genuinely be engaged in this process. For example, we could expand and solidify the Board and school liaison program to include liaisons from each school (teachers, admins, or PTA) that regularly meet with their liaison from the Board. This would strengthen the Board relationships with the schools and provide another layer of representation for the schools. As a Board member, I would hold regular office hours and provide timely responses to questions from the community. I would listen to public speakers during meetings and request community members with expert knowledge on a topic to reach out to me for individual discussion, so I can learn from them and integrate their expertise into the decision-making process. We are fortunate to have a community rich in human capital and expertise and I think we should invite more of our local experts into our discussions.