Candidate Profiles

I am deeply concerned about the future of public education. I believe public education is essential to healthy communities and for maintaining democracy. But public education is under systematic attack in America and in Iowa, and I want to contribute my expertise and energy to protecting, sustaining, and growing our outstanding Iowa City Community School District.

Virtually everything I’ve done in my professional life has been related to education, starting with teaching language arts in our district and two others. My experience is varied and includes many different areas of the educational ecosystem. This diversity of expertise and experience gives me a unique perspective and set of skills to offer to a role on the ICCSD School Board.

I understand firsthand how classrooms, communities, industries, and policymakers intersect and must work together through my work in roles including:
● Science and language arts textbook editor (Buckle Down Publishing)
● Education nonprofit leader (designed strategy and helped start up ACT Foundation)
● Director of partnerships with national trade and industry groups (including construction, manufacturing, and automotive)
● Standardized test development professional (including WorkKeys assessments)
● Nonprofit board leader (currently Vice President of the United Action for Youth board)
● Small business owner (Bluebird Sky, LLC)
● Strategy consultant (for businesses, nonprofits, educational institutions, government agencies, community coalitions, and more)

In addition to understanding the complex education ecosystem, I am a fellow and instructor for the Strategic Doing Institute. This has enabled me to develop expertise in facilitating difficult conversations and to teach others how to design conversations and collaborations to tackle complex challenges. We will certainly face complex local public education challenges in the months and years ahead, and I would like to contribute this skill set to the cause.

Last and certainly not least, I’ve been a member of our community since 1987 and am the parent of two proud ICCSD graduates. This has given me the opportunity to experience our district in its K-12 entirety through my children’s eyes and as a parent volunteer in roles ranging from serving on the Lucas Elementary Before-and-After-School Program board to providing lots and lots of sandwiches for hungry cross country runners. I've seen the amazing work our district does and would like to help be a good steward of it.

For the past few decades, I have followed school board meetings and local education issues through my local newspapers' coverage and through conversations with fellow community members. I have followed education issues at the state and national levels, as well, through education journals, public education forums, and other outlets.

Since making the decision to run for school board, I have attended school board meetings and some committee meetings in person. If I have been out of town and unable to attend in person, I have watched recordings of the board meetings.

Currently, my top three priorities are civil rights and safety, funding, and academic excellence and continuing the work to close achievement gaps.

Civil rights and safety--I will advocate for:
* Policies that protect the full civil rights of all students and staff. I applaud the district's reversal this summer of its initial decision to remove gender identity from its anti-discrimination and anti-bullying policies.
* Further review of policies and practices related to staff and student safety, and continued conversation and collaboration around developing practices that better serve both students and staff. I believe the Sept. 23 community comments and presentation about the district's continuum of services are a good starting point, but there is more work to be done.
* Closely monitoring the rapidly changing state and federal laws and practices responding in ways that provide maximum protection of student and staff rights.

Funding--As public funds are being funneled away from public education, I will advocate for:
* Continuing to bolster district financial practices and oversight to ensure that financial planning and budgeting are as precise as possible.
* Developing contingency plans for scenarios in which expected funding is reduced or removed, or certain funding streams prohibit spending for items the ICCSD considers important.
* Continuing to find creative approaches to encourage families to choose the ICCSD for their students to ensure maximum per-pupil funding.

Academic excellence and continuing to close achievement gaps--I will advocate for:
* Continuing the work to implement strategies laid out in the 2023-27 strategic plan for closing achievement gaps.
* Increased sharing across school buildings of what approaches are working to improve student outcomes.
* Ensuring the continuation of the district-wide preschool program and exploring ways to fully fund preschool for all 4-year-olds.

Strengths:
* Outstanding teachers, staff, and academic offerings
* Rich and high-quality diversity of curricular and extracurricular options for students
* A people-first orientation--placing students and staff at the top of the priority list when making challenging decisions
* District-wide preschool program--continuing to expand access to preschool, which will improve student outcomes and benefit families
* The strong, positive working relationship between the district administration and the Iowa City Education Association

Weaknesses:
* Financial practices (being addressed)--Understaffing and challenges in hiring people with school finance expertise have contributed to errors and delays that are currently being addressed.
* Appearing to not value neighborhood schools the same way much of the community does.
* Occasionally inadequate or confusing messaging about sensitive issues

My goal would be to minimize impact on people--to retain staff and continue to provide the current high-quality programming for students. So, to start, I would:
* Seek efficiencies by evaluating operating procedures to see what could be further automated or streamlined
* Review planned new projects or project expansions to identify any that could be deferred until budget allows or restructured to be completed for a smaller budget
* Review planned purchases to identify any that could be deferred or revised to cut budget
* Explore opportunities for partnering with municipalities or other public entities to share costs

Additionally, I would encourage the district to explore opportunities for grant funding where appropriate to help fill budget shortfall, as well as opportunities to generate revenue, such as through rental of district facilities.

In general, yes, with caveats.

I believe that the arts and athletics are essential to a full education and to developing productive members of society, and public schools are best positioned to create entry points to arts and athletics for all. Thus, I support FMP 2.3 for further developing the ICCSD's capacity for these programs.

Additionally, I believe that comprehensive, long-term planning, like a facilities master plan, is necessary for creating a stable and equitable future. However, the school district is constantly in flux due to both internal and external factors. So, any long-term plan must have regular intervals for reflection and re-evaluation built into it so that adjustments can be made as quickly as possible upon identifying substantial changes in circumstances. This requires discipline in project management and courage in action when required.

My concerns about FMP 2.3 are mainly about risk management. The volatility or potential volatility of school funding, student enrollment, legislation affecting public education, inflation, and other factors we may not even foresee at the moment could radically change our ability to carry out the plan as currently designed. Our commitment to the plan should not come at the cost of our future sustainability as a district. This is another reason I am glad to see the current focus on bolstering the financial operations of the district--accurate financial data will be critical in navigating the turbulent waters ahead.

Through all of this, it will be crucial for the ICCSD to communicate effectively and transparently about the work as it progresses. Clear and open two-way communication with district personnel and with the community are necessary to build and maintain trust and to arrive at the best possible solutions when challenges are faced in the process.

While the ICCSD is already doing many of these things to some degree, I would advocate for continuing to foster this communication and collaborative problem-solving through 1) setting cost parameters ahead of time as guardrails to trigger re-evaluation, 2) regular audits of the project, and 3) regular community updates/conversations.

I would focus on two main things to start:

1) Ensuring that class sizes are as small as feasible, because we know that smaller class sizes help us serve the whole child better and lead to better academic outcomes.

2) Boosting teacher and paraeducator pay and benefits because this is essential to recruiting and retaining the excellent staff we need. Public educators have lost earning power in recent years, and people doing such critical work should be compensated well for it.

The range and quality of the curriculum throughout our district is outstanding. I also see some opportunities for improvement.

A top priority for me is ensuring that ICCSD students are equipped to navigate the complex media world. As mis- and disinformation, AI, deep fakes, and other fragmenting of our information sources proliferate, it's more and more important for people to be able to critically evaluate the media and information they consume and to identify reliable and unreliable sources of information. I would advocate for placing more emphasis on these skills throughout our curriculum.

Additionally, some residents in our district hold the perception that educational pathways that lead places other than to four-year college are not as valued as pathways to four-year college. While ICCSD curriculum offerings include a good range of career and technical options from middle school onward, I'd like to see the school board explore ways to address this perception, whether through our communication, by adjusting course offerings, supplementing guidance support, or other means.

I will continue to regularly visit with students, teachers, staff, administrators, and community members in our district to learn from them and to stay current with ongoing work, ideas, concerns, pain points, and successes. I will use this information gathering and understanding to inform my work on the board.

I will also routinely communicate publicly via social media to keep members of our district informed about meetings, events, and my thoughts and questions on topics of importance to the district.

And, finally, I will participate in community events where there is the opportunity to engage with members of our district in order to learn and receive feedback.

Of course we can do better, and we should continue the work to do so.

With respect to classroom safety related to interactions between students and between staff and students, we can:
* Evaluate de-escalation training provided to staff and improve it where needed, including ensuring that paraeducators who work with especially challenging students are adequately trained.
* Evaluate whether to put in place additional mental health supports for those who do experience violent behavior.
* Evaluate how we are interpreting requirements for services offered to students and explore adjustments in the ways we meet those requirements that may result in increased safety for teachers and for students. The options outlined in the September 23 Continuum of Services presentation to the school board provide good guidance for this.

With respect to whole-building safety, we can continue to evaluate the current plans and protocols for gaps, filing the gaps as they are identified. The current changes to the primary entrances of City and West High are examples of this type of effort.