Issues

My goals for the school board are focused in five main areas.

School Schedule and Childcare

I think the Board should understand and incorporate the costs of decisions about the school schedule, particularly one-off days off from school. Families bear the brunt of uncertainty and the difficulty of finding childcare for dozens of days off from school during the year. The school schedule is unsustainable for families. Broadly, school schedules and childcare options should reflect the needs of families holistically, from capacity at after-school care to options for continued learning and enrichment outside the school calendar. I want to advocate for families on the Board and avoid decisions made in isolation about school operations that have costs and impacts for the community.

Technology in the Classroom

I am a technologist. I work with computers every day. My job is just computer. Our children will grow into a world where their work will likely involve computers and other screens, and they need to know how to use them. But that does not mean screens should become the default medium for learning.

ACPS’s new “Off, Away, All Day” policy is an important improvement. Personal devices must be off or silenced, not visible, and stored away throughout the school day. We should monitor how consistently it works and consider lockable pouches where keeping devices in backpacks leaves too much access and too much enforcement responsibility with teachers.

Our larger unfinished challenge is instructional technology. Our third-graders do not need Chromebooks to be the center of the school day. Our middle-schoolers do not need email to become a routine part of learning. Our teachers should not have to teach content while also supervising a room full of internet-connected devices. Technology should be intentional, age-appropriate, and used only when it is better than books, paper, discussion, or hands-on learning. I wrote a deeper analysis here.

Recovery and Resilience

Stuff is going to happen. Winter weather is going to come, there will be problems with facilities, and who knows what else. Our current approach to recovery is rigid and brittle, emphasizing minimizing all possible risk to school operations while ignoring costs during recovery. We need to re-imagine the way we respond to events like winter storms, avoiding all-or-nothing decision traps and working to overcome challenges we’ve known about for years rather than accepting a substandard way of doing things. I want to improve our recovery plans so that we can incrementally bring schools back online and solve long-running challenges like staffing and bus route issues with creative new approaches.

Evidence-based Policy

I think our education policy is pretty good! I am a former educator myself, and our schools and staff are a huge asset to our community. I am open to opinions, facts, and persuasion from parents, teachers, and other experts, and I’m happy to support ideas that make sense and can build our education capacity even more. I have a particular interest in gifted education policy and ensuring our children have access to resources and pathways that can accelerate their entry into lifelong learning. I am also tremendously supportive of integrating real-world skills and trades into education so our students have a diverse range of options and experiences.

Facilities and Program Management

Managing facilities and budgets across the entire ACPS portfolio is challenging but vital. Our community has enough wealth to provide good buildings for our students. I have extensive experience managing large programs, including work across the entire Air Force Installations portfolio as well as the Operational Energy program. In particular, we pioneered creative mechanisms for incentivizing costs savings combined with a mechanism to re-invest those savings in further improvements. I hope to bring this approach to ACPS and ensure we have world-class facilities for years to come.

What would you like to see?

I believe strongly in advocacy on behalf the community, and although I have my own positions and beliefs, I want to be a conduit for anyone out there to bring their ideas, complaints, and other thoughts to the Board. If you have any suggestions or comments, send them my way! I want to learn what is important to you!