This district is faced with the challenge of helping all students achieve to their potential, while it copes with the demands of a rapidly-growing student population.  I have volunteered in our schools for ten years, recently compiled the district's history, and have chaired a School Governance Committee, giving me the insight and knowledge of the system's strengths and weaknesses.

I have advocated successfully before local, county, and state elected bodies.  I will work with other elected officials and clearly communicate what and why specific resources are necessary to help our excellent staff enhance all students' achievement.

Achievement: Over the last several years the district's ability to measure achievement and growth for all our students has improved dramatically. From that data, we have learned that some populations, particularly minority and economically-disadvantaged, are not achieving at nearly the same level as other students. The district has been concerned as well about students' achievement at all levels of the academic continuum because it has not been growing consistently. This school system has excellent faculty and staff who can and have been addressing these problems.  I believe they are going in the right direction particularly with the Professional Learning Community initiative that is giving teachers an effective process to help each other improve their teaching skills.

Impact: I have long preached the value of effective program evaluation in my work for several youth-serving agencies over 20 years.  I will look carefully at program results to ensure that the district is using strategies that make a difference for our students. I will also think carefully before supporting new initiatives without being assured that the existing interventions are not working and that the new plan has been shown to be effective elsewhere. Again, I believe that our school district has excellent faculty and staff but it never hurts to have extra scrutiny from board members who have different professional experiences.

School resources: I will use my knowledge of policy-making at the county and state level, and my unrelenting desire to communicate effectively, to ensure that elected leaders and policymakers in our county have the confidence that supporting Chapel Hill Carrboro School District programs is a sound investment in our County's future.

The school district must continue its search for the most cost-effective ways to ensure that every student fulfills his or her potential.  I will use my knowledge of program evaluation to assist the board in evaluating information about our initiatives. Once we have ensured that programs are as effective as they can be, then we will need to educate both the public and the County Commissioners that funding the district's budget request will produce the results that all leaders in Orange County want for our children. 

As anyone who has worked with me professionally or as a volunteer can attest, I value good communications above nearly everything else. I will use my knowledge of policy-making at the county and state level, and my unrelenting desire to communicate effectively, to ensure that elected leaders and policymakers in our county have the confidence that support of district programs is a sound investment in our County's future.

While the school board does not have a mandate to regulate growth in the district, it has been able to work with other elected bodies through the Schools Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (SAPFO).  This law ties town development with school construction so that we do not have as much of a delay, and the resulting overcrowding, as in the past. I will continue to study and support planning initiatives in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County.  I will work with District staff to support excellent two-way communication with the professional planning staff and elected officials particularly as they consider the timing of new residential projects.

The most important way to ensure a smoother budget process is to have early, frank communication between the School Board, the County Commissioners and their top administrators.  I have been an advocate for adequate school funding for the last three years.  As an outsider I have observed that the budget process appears to be a complex dance that involves pre-determined steps for all parties.  Unfortunately this dance creates unnecessary angst among parents and the school staff who are waiting for reassurance that they will have jobs the following school year.  That angst has a specific cost: every year the district loses competent staff that can no longer tolerate the annual perceived threats to their job security.

I have already spoken with three out of the five Commissioners to try to understand their perspective regarding this problem.  The good news is that the key players have already taken steps to improve early communication regarding the budget.  There is a standing committee, the School Collaboration Work Group, moderated by the Dispute Settlement Center, which includes leadership from both school systems and the county.  They have committed to focus their meetings this year on improving the budget process.

I understand that other citizens who follow the budget process may propose more substantial reforms to the budget system.  The School Board would not have the power to implement them but I would certainly support initiatives that improved communication between the Boards and reduced the angst currently generated by the current process.

We will not know until the academies have been operating for a couple of years how much they will increase student engagement in the learning process.  I am the East PTSA representative to the Social Justice Academy Advisory Committee.  I also know several students who are participating in that academy at East Chapel Hill High School so I will certainly be able to get informal feedback from the participating students and teachers at the end of this year.  However, we will need to let the academies grow and mature before a consensus will be reached on their impact.

The academies will increase student engagement only for the students who have enrolled in one of them.  The District must continue to consider and evaluate other ways to engage the remaining students.  It is beginning to implement a concept called the Pyramid of Interventions to make sure that staff catch students who are at-risk of disconnecting from education well before those students actually drop out.  I remain concerned that our District has not found a way to identify and serve students who aren't failing but are underperforming compared to their potential.  Often, attentive parents point out this phenomena to the students' teachers but I worry about the kids whose parents are intimidated by the school system or are overwhelmed by the other challenges they face.

In the short run, I will strongly encourage staff involved in the East Academy to look carefully at how they will measure success.  So often, a new initiative is launched with out early consideration of how to determine results.  It is much easier to evaluate a program that was designed with "evaluability" in mind.  If elected to the School Board, I will apply that standard to my consideration of all the academies and, for that matter, all new programs implemented within this school system.

As a long-time volunteer in elementary school classrooms, I can attest that the District's faculty are working very hard to improve black, Hispanic and economically-disadvantaged students' achievement.  They cannot work much harder.  What they can and have begun to do is to work together in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to help each other improve the teaching techniques they use with particular types of students.  Teachers in particular subject areas and grade levels are developing common assessments of the essential information that all students need to learn.  Through out the school year, the teachers are assessing students and immediately helping each other when they find out that one or more of the teachers are having trouble teaching particular subject matter.  In addition, I understand the school principals are working more effectively to ensure that teachers are using high-impact teaching strategies that are also culturally sensitive.

Schools can continue to build stronger ties to and among students and parents of particular racial and ethnic groups.  Parents want the best for their children; we just have to all work together to figure out how to make that happen.  Soon after I became Chair of the Estes Hills School Governance Committee, I sought out and met with a teacher and an assistant principal at another local school that had made great strides in reaching out to minority families.  I facilitated a subcommittee that focused on reaching out to minority parents.  There are affinity groups for youth of particular ethnicities in the middle and high schools.  This kind of work takes long-term commitment on the part of faculty, staff and parent volunteers.

I have been saying for nearly 20 years that the best teen pregnancy prevention program is a well-implemented, Head Start-style preschool program.  Those programs have proven impact on students' long-term success both academically and socially.  As Board deliberation about pre-K services proceeds, if elected, I would also ask how to ensure that any program sponsored by the district will meet the needs of the children who need it most.  With just a surface-understanding of the District's First School proposal for Seawell, I wasn't convinced that it would have targeted adequately the children who would have needed it most.