Over the past 2 to 3 years, I’ve become more aware of issues facing our school system, teachers, parents, and students as we’ve endured remote learning, controversial political topics, and growth in our community. With two children enrolled in the district, I’ve had the opportunity to see first hand how administrative policies are negatively impacting our teachers and our children. I believe that our district has drifted further and further away from a school’s core mission of academic education, and in doing so, has also lost the trust of the community. Coming from a family of teachers, and having been a youth sports coach for 15 years, I understand the unique challenges facing educators in their charge to please often conflicting groups. However, I believe that a return to academic focus at every level will alleviate much of this burden, and benefit the students, teachers, parents, and the overall community.

I believe the the core mission of the K-12 education system is to prepare children academically for their choice of either immediate entry into the workforce or to pursue a higher degree in a field of their choosing. Upon successful completion of a k-12 experience, a student should have the academic knowledge and skills necessary to become a self sustaining, productive, member of the community. These skills should include competency in Mathematics, Language Arts, Science, Civics, Economics, History, and Geography. Straying too far away from these areas to insert personal ideologies or to influence particular outcomes leads to a decline in academic success, mistrust by the community, and additional burden on educators.

As a board member, parents and teachers can expect me to attempt to focus all resources of the school corporation toward academic excellence. The community can also expect a renewed commitment to restoring trust with the community through transparency and communication. You can expect me to represent the Hoosier values of individual accountability, discipline, integrity, and of course hospitality. I believe there is a reason people move away from larger cities and from far away states to join our community, and I aim to protect what draws them here.

The school board is elected by the community and is accountable to the community. School board members must provide time and resources to make themselves available to hear from their constituents. Board members serve as the direct link between the community and the school system and should be viewed as a trusted liaison between the administration and the public.  As a school board member I would immediately motion to extend more time for public comment and also add a time for general comments that do not have to be related to the agenda. Regardless of whether or not the board agrees with a member of the community, they deserve time to be heard publicly and address their tax paid board members.

I believe that the biggest challenge facing education is apathy. For too long, Americans have mindlessly loaded their children onto busses for 13 years, and expected them to come back as well-rounded, articulate, educated citizens, ready for work, college, marriage, and life in general. We’ve placed more and more burden on public schools and their staffs to act as primary instructors for our children while we spend less and less time with them. We’ve even given over much of our parental duties to raise our children socially to the school systems. Many of us not only didn’t take issue with this expansion of influence, but asked for and applauded it. Through this expansion, we’ve refused to address the added burden on educators, the increased demands on counselors, and the additional costs to the communities as school corporations become the largest industry in many of our towns. The education industry has become so large, in fact, that it has become like any other major national corporation that gradually pushes out the local mom & pop store. Values no longer reflect the community, service suffers, costs go up, wages stagnate. I believe the way to alleviate virtually all of these negative affects is to make education as local as possible again. The teacher, the student, and the parent should be the most important and powerful partnership in education. When each is aligned and communicating, we’ll see the the responsibility of parents, the value of educators, and the success of students restored.

In almost every case, yes. This is however where we now get into nuance and specific scenarios. I believe that the vast majority of parents are good people and want their children to become good people. We can have differences of opinions on thousands of topics, but most parents aim to have their children become happy, healthy, and prosperous members of the community. I believe that however a parent chooses for their child to achieve these goals is their right. However, there are of course the egregious examples of abusive parents, leading their children into a life of pain, suffering, criminal activity, etc. I do believe that a classroom can occasionally be a place where those traumatic situations are revealed and that the adult in the room has a responsibility to alert law enforcement. From that point, it is no longer the school’s jurisdiction and teachers especially should not be burdened with the tasks of child protective services, social workers, or law enforcement. In saying this about some, extremely few, parents we also must realize that these cases can stem from any influential adult including members of the school staff or places of employment and redundancies and third party reporting avenues must also exist there. There is no title that completely precludes an adult from malfeasance or abuse when it comes to children, but in general, I believe that the title that should be seen as the most trusted and powerful in a child’s life is “Mother” or “Father”.