Why am I running for the school board?
That’s a great question one my wife keeps asking me all the time! The answer is pretty simple, but the decision and commitment was hard to make. I am running because I care about kids and I care about our community. Current school board priorities do not seem to be putting our kids first and our community does not trust the board. I’ve served on WAPS committees in the past and I have had children, and still have one, in the public school system. I have 26 years of public accounting experience, management and budgeting. If elected, my commitment to WAPS would be one that is undivided and works hard to focus on the education or our kids and keeping us financially sound.
My Key Campaign Points:
· The students must come first – up to date curriculum and class sizes must be a priority, along with adequate space, equipment and supplies.
· Decision-making must be above board and transparent to all. There are too many items on the boards consent agenda. The public agendas and published minutes should also have more detail in them.
· We need to re-build trust, respect and cooperation in the community and throughout the district – this can only be accomplished via accountability in:
o Spending of taxpayers dollars (we need to take the opportunity while we have funds to not just spend them all, but to keep looking for areas reduce costs and not get back into the mess we were in)
o The quality of education we provide our children
(The school board, administrators and teachers all have these responsibilities and need to be fairly evaluated on how they are doing. It is not acceptable to have test scores that are not improving and lower than the state average)
· There needs to be better long-range planning. Not having identified homes for ALL of the programs in the Lincoln building before selling and under taking re-modeling for some programs should not have happened. We need to answer the question of where did all of the grade school capacity go? The Board identified that there was capacity and schools needed to close – the decisions made since then were to move all the 5th graders to WMS and close Ridgeway and Dakota. Closing Ridgeway and Dakota DID NOT reduce capacity since they opened as charter schools and kept the students - moving the 5th graders only provided more space in the elementary buildings.
· The ALC is an important program and should have a new home. We should not have a building built that the school district has to rent and pass this cost on to the taxpayers via a levy that can be applied without public approval
· All district programs need to be housed in district buildings before space is rented to outside entities while some of our programs continue to seek space.
· Grade level buildings should be considered for all grades, not just 5 – 12, for the elementary buildings in town. It was a mistake to close Ridgeway and Dakota and ask those elementary students to take long bus rides when there are multiple buildings close to each other in town. Why do we bus students who live closer to Rollingstone all the way to Goodview? School attendance boundaries should be reviewed.
· Decisions must be based on what is best for the whole district.
