Leading Voice for Our Community
Education for ALL Students
Addressing the needs of all students is a priority for me as we return our students to 5 day in-person learning while still offering a remote option. The environment that our students learn in must remain safe and adhere to all of the mitigations that we have put in place. Quality education for all students means addressing achievement gaps and learning loss due to our last year of remote and hybrid learning. Using data to determine the needs of our students and addressing those needs through summer programming and additional support next year will be critical to ensure educational growth. Our continued work on goals set by the Comprehensive Equity Plan is another important aspect of educating all students in an environment that celebrates each individual student.
Effective Communication
Communication is a key issue for a community that highly values its educational system. This has been a goal for me over the last eight years as we involved the community in FOCUS 203 collaborative engagements and introduced TALK203. As the pandemic took over our last year we have had to pivot and with that our communication has had to pivot as well. Through outreach meetings with each Home & School Executive Board we have developed a new 203 in 2:03 video messaging where our Superintendent addresses topics that are of most importance to our community. We have learned that the most important communications are coming from classroom teachers and building principals but the new videos will help us to also communicate to the larger community including those that do not have students in school and our business community. Communication is more than just the avenue to share information, it is a standard of transparency while holding a high level of accountability for our administration. Communication as a board member also involves an enormous amount of listening to our community and then being the voice of the entire community at the board meetings. All of this communication allows me as a board member to be prepared and make informed decisions on behalf of our students and community.
Financial Responsibility
The Board of Education holds a commitment to the community to be fiscally responsible with its resources and to be a careful steward of the local property taxpayers’ dollars. My goal is to continue a tradition of efficiency by providing an educational system to serve our students and community with no budgetary waste. Over the last 8 years through the decisions that I have personally supported with my votes, we have reduced the tax burden by $32.7 million dollars while still having the highest number of exemplary schools for a unit school district in the state of Illinois. Finding this balance of maintaining the high level of excellence in education and making decisions that have realized savings for our taxpayers is critical.