Campaign Phone
3057424964
Families simply do not trust our school board. This can only change with a new culture of transparency, genuine community engagement, and a board that prioritizes our children. Negotiating the future of our closed school sites and the Citizens Field project will become monumental challenges without the support of our community, or our city leaders. The potential decrease in State funding due to upcoming legislation will also make the school boards future budget highly complex and limited. As a candidate and a business person, I believe in thinking outside of the box and approaching these upcoming challenges proactively by planning to build new partnerships within the community. We cannot continue operating the same way. We need new leaders.
I don't think we need to bring a lawsuit similar to Spar v. Kamoutsas. But, since 2021, Florida's public funding diverted to scholarship programs has drastically increased from about 12% of the states education budget, doubling to about 24% in 2025. This is about $4.9 billion of public funds every year being directed to private schools which are not required to follow the same rules of public schools. And approximately 69% of students already enrolled in these private schools are receiving these public funds. If this trend continues, public schools will continue to fail. We need to begin this conversation with the FDE and see how we can reverse this negative trend quickly. This will take fearless leadership from a proactive board.
We need to shift our focus away from 3rd grade retention to Kindergarten. Pushing our students through to 3rd grade has failed our community repeatedly. The early literacy data continues to show us that many kindergarteners are being forced into 1st grade without knowing how to read. Our district continues to create "literacy specialist" positions for these teachers to only help our 3rd-5th grade students prepare for testing. Our kindergarten students are regularly overlooked and left to fall behind for 3 years with the idea that our "literacy specialists" will catch them up in time for 3rd grade testing. We need our literacy specialists, administrators, and additional resources to begin supporting early literacy in kindergarten.
Campaign Phone
772-834-3307
The biggest challenges facing our school board is our achievement gap, our budget, and lack of adequate support for our teachers.
We will use data provided by FDOE's accountability framework to find where our resources are best used. I also would like to make sure our strategies, educational and behavioral, align with the state so we are on better footing to request additional support if needed.
We need to make sure we emphasize the science of reading, have the resources available for early interventions, and make sure our teachers are supported to correctly implement teaching strategies. I am a huge proponent of reducing technology, especially in the early grades, and moving back to paper-based instruction.
Campaign Phone
3523165046
Fiscal accountability
Unity
Progress
The Florida Department of Education sets the standards and guidelines for school boards to follow for our policies and budgets. By using these standards and guidelines, we can use FLDOE as a adjunct to make sure what goals/standards we are setting in Alachua not only meets the minimum but exceeds their requirements. By doing that, we know we are setting our students up for success.
Literacy outcomes start in VPK and foundationally that is where Alachua County has to invest to make our students successful. Our youngest students are our most vulnerable students because if there isn't a foundation to build on, then reading will be very difficult for them. Not all students have families that can help their children read, but we have a school district that has the resources to help these children. We must actively make this a priority and the strategies have to be small class sizes, one on one help with children that have IEP's, and identify early those children that are struggling.
