The Wednesday Journal sent questionnaires to each person running for public office in 2025. The Journal’s questions are in bold and the candidate’s responses are below.
Last summer, Wednesday Journal reported on a demonstration by district parents and teachers expressing concerns over student safety and behavioral policy. What do you make of D97’s behavioral policies?
As a parent, I’d heard some troubling stories about safety concerns at the middle schools. When our son started at Brooks, I jumped at the opportunity to be the parent liaison on the Culture and Climate Committee which met monthly to review data and to propose school-wide interventions. From my participation, I concluded that policies on paper are a start, but the more important factor for great school culture is ensuring our teachers are fully set up to implement policies.
As a former teacher and school principal, I know that teachers and administrators need access to high-quality and ongoing professional development on creating and maintaining a positive and safe school environment in all areas of the building. The D97 teachers who I’ve spoken with want to ensure that there is clear, fair, and consistent accountability for students who disrupt the learning environment. I would highlight the heightened enforcement at Brooks this year of the “away for the day” cell phone policy as a bright spot. By combining support for teachers to enforce the policy consistently with clarity for students about the behavioral expectations, the overall school environment benefitted.
What do you see as some of the biggest challenges facing elementary and middle school students in our post-pandemic world? How would you work to support D97 students?
For elementary students, I believe literacy is the greatest challenge. Looking at the NAEP score released just last week is a stark reminder of the ground lost during the pandemic and a call to action. I’m excited that the elementary schools are conducting concurrent curriculum pilots to help determine the future of literacy instruction within the district. We may need to experiment with other supplements for key populations.
For middle school students, I believe their greatest challenge is developing important social opportunities they missed out on at earlier development stages due to the pandemic. Now more than ever before, these children are longing for connection and belonging, but are overly reliant on online spaces that don’t (can’t) fill that need. Instead, I think we can help them build community in person by increasing the number of sports, clubs, and activities offered.
A strong evidence-based social-emotional learning curriculum will benefit both elementary and middle school students.
Is there any program or resource you’ve seen implemented in another school district that you think D97 students and families would really benefit from? How would it fill an existing gap?
Students need more support with Social Emotional Learning- OpenSeat expands a school’s capacity to provide personalized 1:1 social-emotional support to every student, extending both the number of kids a counseling team can support and adding much-needed diversity to serve all kids. Schools primarily use OpenSeat as a Tier 2 MTSS intervention for students struggling with attendance, grades, and in-class engagement to ensure students have the social-emotional support and the plan they need to rebound. We need a more user-friendly SIS to make data more actionable -PowerBuddy is a relatively new product created as an add-on to PowerSchool. PowerBuddy can help students with their homework, help teachers understand gradebook trends, and help parents get customized alerts on their student’s grades. I believe there are a lot of mediocre products on the market. However, PowerBuddy seems to provide value to all of the various stakeholders in a school and is something I would love to see in D97.
What does equity in education mean to you? How would you advocate for it if elected?
I’m a proud first-generation college graduate who attended public schools in an economically disadvantaged part of southern Ohio. My college and graduate school education has changed the trajectory of my life, thereby impacting the next few generations of my family. Through playing sports, I became aware of the disparities in the quality of the schools I attended versus those of my opponents only a few miles away. Equity is making sure that all children in Oak Park receive an amazing education where they learn to the best of their ability in a supportive environment regardless of what quadrant they live in or any dimension of their identity, especially race or gender. If elected to the board I promise to remain committed to advocating for equity in our schools every day. The current inequitable outcomes didn’t happen overnight and thus the solutions addressing those issues won’t easily be solved. However, in order to make progress, we need a board and a community that is willing to be in the fight for equity for the long haul for all children.
With a new presidential administration has come sweeping federal changes affecting public schools. How would you look to guide the district in this new climate?
We have over 1,042 days left of the current administration. To navigate through and withstand more changes, it is imperative that the district holds firm to the core values that make Oak Park unique. Oak Park has a storied history of embracing diversity, using it as a strength instead of a liability, and being forward-thinking. It will take unwavering courage during the next few years to make sure that we are protecting our students and our community. That courage will require us to have a steadfast commitment to diversity, our protection of LGBTQ students and staff, and our sanctuary status and inclusion of migrant students. We by no means need to pick a fight with the federal government and should be thoughtful about how we proceed. However, we can’t sit on our hands if members of our community are being targeted or hard-won progress for our district is eroded.