Priorities

PLANS FOR ACTION

Academics First

Return to Academic Excellence – We need to be laser focused on the mission of education, to ensure that every student is proficient in the basics of reading, writing, math and science so that they can thrive once they graduate and move to their next phase of life.

Safety,Order and Respect

Students and teachers need an environment free from distraction, fear and uncertainty in order to learn and teach effectively. I will strive to help establish policies that protect all students and staff, policies that will require consistency in reporting and response, policies that will support teachers so that their time can be spent teaching rather than disciplining the few at the expense of the many.

Transparency in Leadership

We need to understand the impact and effectiveness of policies that are being implemented at the district level. Every policy should have a positive impact on student outcomes that can be measured. What gets measured, gets attention. I want to ensure that the board and administration are being transparent with the important metrics that indicate success at the student level. Parents and community members (tax payers) deserve to know how their school funding is being spent, what the expected return on investment will be and how it will be measured

Grade level proficiency in Reading, Math and Science are down significantly and has not rebounded. (source MDE MN Report Card)
As a board member I will dig in to understand the key factors behind this decline and then work to craft a plan to turn this performance around school by school and grade by grade.
Using SMART goal setting I will push for conistent and frequent monitoring of progress and make course corrections if goals are not being met.

Regular Attendance - WBL regular attendance is 61% a full 8.5 points BELOW the state average - I will seek to understand how the district is tolerating such a large amount of absenteeism yet still maintaining graduation rates in the low 90 percent level. This appears to be a "school culture" issue and needs to be addressed.
Cell phones - I will push for policies to eliminate cell phones use in the classroom
Discipline - I will push for the giving teachers the ability to discipline students in ways that are minimally disruptive to the entire class and allows them to remove disruptive students so that they can focus on teaching.
Spending directed to the classroom - I will work to reverse the trend of spending nearly 2-1/2 times the rate on School Administration over teaching staff. (Source: MDE, https://public.education.mn.gov/MDEAnalytics/DataTopic.jsp?TOPICID=79