I ask all of the voters reading to ask themselves: "Are you happy with the way MPS has been run the past few years?"
From employee health care accounts being mishandled to IRS fines; from missing out on reimbursements from the state due to accounting errors to several senior district finance officials resigning amid being placed on administrative leave, the lack of effective financial oversight by district administrators is incredibly concerning.
It is clear MPS needs better finance and accounting processes and governance. Our district is in a tight spot financially and is facing difficult and challenging decisions relating to how to address the current deficit.
The same district office that has been losing track of millions in special education expenses (that could have been reimbursed by the state), is saying there is no way to stabilize the district's budget besides this school closure plan? I am not buying it
Before any decision as massive as potentially closing or selling a building is made, there first has to be improvement from the school board and district office in regards to the governance of finance and accounting processes.
Our community deserves someone on the board who can bring a businessperson's financial skills and pair it with an educator's heart. This current board and district office is not committing to the right priorities.
As an educator myself, I have seen firsthand the positive impact schools can have on young people. My #1 priority in the classroom, before any curriculum-based initiative, has been supporting students from all backgrounds and walks of life.
Before anything else, it will be my mission as a school board member to make sure we do what we can from a policy standpoint to help all students feel supported in the classroom. When students feel supported, they grow more comfortable using their voices. And when they feel comfortable using their voices, they learn to take risks and not be afraid to fail.
I want to bring this positive classroom environment to every student across the district, and in doing so, make MPS a place where students and parents alike want to be. It is no secret that MPS has seen declining enrollment over the past several years, and I want to do my part to help turn it around. Our community deserves public schools that we can all be proud of.
As a business ed teacher in the high school classroom, I have personally seen building- and district-level policies that work for teachers, kids, and parents. And I have seen policies that do not work. My primary tech-related initiatives are:
1) Transition away from "one-to-one" student laptops in favor of shared laptop carts;
2) Stop the current policy of issuing iPads to students in PreK - 2nd grade; and
3) Adopt a stricter, phone-free school environment policy from bell-to-bell
I have seen firsthand the negative effects that an overemphasis on "one-to-one", school-assigned tech has had on our students' ability to read and write. I encourage everyone to read the countless scientific research studies recently that have shown laptops & tablets are not correlated to significant growth in K-12 math & reading scores. I am currently writing my Master's thesis on this topic, and I have seen studies from the U.S. and abroad that have actually shown the presence of these devices actively hurts student learning.
Many Minnesotans like to compare our state's K-12 education system to those found in the much-hyped Scandinavian countries. Over a decade ago, those countries were leaders in embracing technology as a way to "prepare students for the digital future".
However, after years of plateuing student reading & math scores (even before Covid-19), many have begun to shift away. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are amongst a growing list of countries who are realizing that screentime on laptops and reliance on EdTech products is not an effective formula for student learning, and they have begun to shift their K-12 instructional policies away from a digital focus.
There are definitely times in school when students will need to work on a computer in order to learn a special skill or concept, but physical books and paper should be the default medium for general note-taking, reading, and worksheets. Most importantly, we need to give teachers the necessary board and admin support to make this transition happen effectively.