My Platform: In Detail
I am on a mission to create a highly functioning school board that puts KIDS FIRST.
My Platform
Experienced: My experience and proven success will help us be a highly functioning school board.
Why is this important? Because a highly functional school board puts KIDS FIRST. I‘m in the best position to help lead our school board back in that direction. Even with a disfunctional board, I have been able to move the ball forward for kids. I have passed policy such as our Student Advisor position, and moving these conversations around school discipline. I stood up to our board leadership when they put politics before kids and won, alongside some amazing students. I have been performing well enough as a board member that Marion County chose me to represent all school boards and our entire region on the state level. I will use my experience, vision, and Integrity to make the Salem-Keizer school board a highly functioning board.
Experience:
In my years of experience, I have proven success in working across the aisle to put kids first.To lead our school board into this new chapter, we need leadership that has the experience and a proven track record of success. If re-elected, I will have the 2nd most experience behind Marty Heyen, I am the most qualified candidate in this race, and I am the only candidate not endorsed by special interest groups.
Vision:
We need formal and measurable Board Goals so that we can hold the School Board and Superintendent accountable In a systemic way. We need to be unified as a board behind this one vision, speak to the district with one voice, and I have the training and experience to help us get there.
Integrity:
We need to put kids first, keep politics out of the board room, and have a board that is active and engaged in our community. I have proven that I can do this, and will do my best to promote a healthy and positive culture.
Focused: We need to change our systems to meet the needs of kids, not change kids to fit the system.
I’m focused on doing the work. I have a proven record, I have the knowledge of how the systems work, and I have the experience with proven success to continue my work in ensuring that our systems TRULY serve kids using an equity lense. If you ever listen to our board reports, it is clear that I spend almost every waking moment fighting for kids in our district. To be honest it’s hard having all my hard work on the line like this, but i’m going to keep my head down and keep doing the work. Here are a few big issues I plan to tackle:
Getting kids back to school safely
- The current district plan is to have all students back 5 days a week, full time, and IN-PERSON this fall.
Student Resource Officers (SRO’s)
- This conversation needs to be driven by facts, data, the the experiences/results of those students and teachers who are in the schools every day.
Career and Technical Educaiton (CTE)
- CTE and CTEC are proven to imporove graduation rates, and helps give our students real-world experience that will help them be successful in life.
Elections
- It is vital that the conversations around changing our elections is done by those who aren’t going to try to gerrymander it to go their way. I know the system very well since i’m the one to wrote policy to change it and will do my best to ensure this is a community led conversation.
Re-Imagining School Discipline
- We are already working on this, and I serve as the board liaison on the steering committee.
Tackle opportunity gaps head-on
- I will continue to evaluate our systems to ensure we are doing the best we can to help our students succeed.
District-Wide Dual Language program
- This is the future of education in America. By having our Duel Language program district-wide, we will better prepare our students for a global economy, improve student achievement across the board (This is proven), systemically have staff that represents students culturally as well, and break down racial and cultural barriers in our commmunity.
Teaching True history
- Some of the history in our curriculum leaves large gaps of truth out. One example is: Did you know that Grand Ronde, (my tribe, and our local tribe) wasn’t federally recognized after the Termination Act until the 1980’s? My father was a kid, and I was born about 10 years later. The impact of this history directly impacts our students.
Mental Health support
- Our students will be dealing with the harm from this pandemic for a long time, and it will be our job to ensure we are there for them. It is our Job to ensure we are helping them heal and grow, not criminalizing them.
School board orientation
- The school board clearly needs an orientation for new board members. This will help board members learn their role specifically with Salem-Keizer. If all board members have a base-level understanding of their role, then we will ALL do better.
Are there other issues you want me to take on? Contact me, we are all in this together!
Engaged: I work hard and have built the relationships that we need to continue improving our schools
I have been hyper-engaged in our community, volunteering in our schools, building relationships, and doing the work. Here’s what my engagement brings:
- Listening and learning: I spend many hours a week volunteering around our community so that I can be truly involved at the grass roots level and understand what the impacts of our decisions are.
- Voice: I work hard to stand for our students who are often left unheard and may feel like their voices don’t matter. For example: I think of myself as a modern-day warrior for my Tribe and my people. I advocate and fight for my Native American brothers and sisters. I often find myself advocating for our Foster students, BIPOC students, special needs students, homeless students etc.
- Leadership: As a school board member, I serve our students inside and outside of the classroom. I’m working on irradiating chronic homelessness in our community with a few of our leaders, I stepped up when our county was burning and they needed my help, and I do this in many roles, ALL THE TIME.
