“This is something I can do with my experience [in K-5 education and as a parent], to give back to the community. We need to involve our community much, much more. It’s the community that makes our schools great, and when schools are great our community is better for it.”
On revenue…
“We need to reach out and get more people involved in the community… there are a lot of [new parents] who don’t get involved in the school system. We need to get them involved now so our school system is solvent by the time their kids are enrolled… Given the fluctuations in enrollment we need a long-term plan for sustainability for our schools. Preschool is something that’s been mentioned.”
On Common Core…
“I’m in favor of it; it focuses on critical thinking… My biggest concern for the future is the technical aspect of it. In 2015 students will be assessed online – they have to be doing typing and short answers… it will be challenging and students need to be prepared and we need to be prepared technologically.”
On overcrowding…
“We’ve been kicking this further down the road for a long time… We need a long-term solution. The last time we had this enrollment of 1,400 plus kids we had six schools – now we’re down to two. We know enrollment may going to go up, may going to go down, revenue will go up, and it may go down. Since we know it’s going to happen, we need to be prepared for it… Bringing preschool back to schools would give us flexibility incase enrollment does drop again.”
On sustainability…
“A voter I talked to this past weekend asked me about the teacher salaries and why they accounted for such a large percentage of the school’s budget. I asked him where education begins – the classroom. Where else would the money go? I would love our new construction to be green, I think it should be green – my priority is what’s going on in the classroom and if we are serving the students as best we can. What happens in the classroom should be our primary concern.”
