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Campaign Phone
904-347-8768
My career has been dedicated to serving students, families, and educators through leadership at every level of education. I have taught in the classroom, led schools, served in higher education, and managed complex organizations with responsibility for budgets, personnel, and strategic planning. As CEO of a nonprofit, I have built partnerships, solved real-world challenges, and created workforce initiatives that strengthen our community. As a parent of children in St. Johns County schools and an active community leader, I understand the opportunities and challenges our district faces. I will bring proven leadership, fiscal accountability, transparency, and a steadfast commitment to academic excellence and parental involvement.
St. Johns County Schools are recognized as one of the top-performing districts in Florida because of our outstanding teachers, engaged parents, high academic standards, and a community that values education. We should be proud of that success while continuing to support and retain exceptional educators. At the same time, our rapid growth presents challenges. We must ensure responsible fiscal stewardship, provide adequate resources for classrooms, address teacher recruitment and retention, and plan proactively for enrollment and facility needs. My goal is to preserve the excellence that defines our district while leading with transparency, accountability, and a focus on student success.
To recruit and retain great teachers, we must treat them like the professionals they are. Competitive pay is important, but so is meaningful support. We need high-quality, practical professional development, mentorship for new teachers, and resources that help them succeed in the classroom. We should also reduce unnecessary administrative burdens and give teachers greater flexibility to use their creativity and expertise to engage students while meeting academic standards. Most teachers don't choose this profession for the paycheck—they teach because they love children and want to make a difference. Our policies should empower them to do exactly that.
Every student deserves a safe, orderly classroom where learning can take place. While we should support students facing challenges, disruptive behavior cannot be allowed to interfere with the education of others. Teachers need clear, consistent discipline policies and the authority to maintain an effective learning environment. Consequences should be fair, age-appropriate, and consistently enforced, while also addressing the root causes of behavior when possible. We must support both accountability and intervention so every student has the opportunity to succeed without compromising the learning of their classmates.
The safety of our students and staff must always be our highest priority. St. Johns County is fortunate to have an outstanding partnership with the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, including their Real-Time Intelligence Center (RTIC), which provides an added layer of security and rapid response capabilities. We should continue investing in this partnership while maintaining secure campuses, strengthening emergency preparedness, providing ongoing safety training for staff, improving communication systems, and ensuring schools have the resources needed to respond quickly to any threat. A safe school is the foundation for academic success.
St. Johns County Public Schools have earned their reputation for excellence, and I will be a bold, unapologetic advocate for our district in Tallahassee. I will fight for every dollar our students, teachers, staff, and schools deserve while ensuring our district has the resources to remain the best in Florida. I also believe parents should have educational choices that best meet their children's needs. Those principles are not mutually exclusive. We can support parental choice while aggressively advocating for strong public schools, excellent teachers, academic excellence, and fair, sustainable funding for every student we serve.
Campaign Phone
2675664253
I am a professionally trained Community and Regional Planner and a local small business owner who understands how to manage complex budgets. I hold a degree from Temple University and previously worked for a nonprofit addressing food insecurity. Most importantly, I am a dedicated mother of two daughters attending Valley Ridge Academy. I actively serve on our Parent Teacher Organization board and the School Advisory Council. My professional background in infrastructure planning makes me uniquely qualified to address our explosive population growth and rezoning issues. I am stepping up to provide common sense leadership and have pledged to donate half my board salary directly back to local parent teacher organizations.
Our greatest strength is our incredible educators who have maintained our top academic rating in Florida. We offer elite advanced placement and career technical programs that prepare students for success. However, our district faces significant weaknesses regarding rapid population growth and fiscal management. It is fiscally irresponsible to build new $67 million dollar schools while neighboring facilities sit under capacity due to poor demographic planning. We are also facing a severe teacher retention crisis, having recently lost dozens of highly qualified educators to neighboring counties because our wages have not kept pace with the local cost of living. We must demand data driven infrastructure modeling.
Improving the classroom experience is about treating educators like the highly trained professionals they are. We need to trust their professional judgment regarding curriculum and what is developmentally appropriate for their students. Our board must work to keep distracting national political culture wars out of our schools so teachers can actually focus on teaching. Furthermore, we must ensure educators have the specific classroom resources and manageable class sizes needed to deliver individualized attention. By fostering an environment of professional respect and prioritizing academic excellence over political agendas, we can make our district the premier destination for elite teaching talent once again.
We must support our teachers and administrators by ensuring disciplinary policies are applied consistently across all schools. Disruptive behavior directly impacts the learning environment for every student in the classroom. I believe in empowering our educators to maintain order and trusting their expertise when interventions are needed. We also need to ensure our schools are adequately staffed with counselors and mental health professionals to identify root causes of behavioral issues early. By combining clear expectations for student conduct with appropriate wraparound support services, we can maintain safe and productive classrooms where both students and teachers can thrive without constant interruption.
Safety requires a comprehensive approach that includes secure infrastructure, dedicated personnel, and robust mental health support. We must leverage smart facility planning to ensure our campuses are secure from external threats and that traffic routes around our schools are safe for walkers and drivers alike. I strongly support maintaining trained safety personnel on our campuses. Additionally, protecting categorical funding for student mental health resources is critical. When we invest in counselors and proactively address the wellbeing of our student body, we prevent many safety issues before they escalate. A safe school environment is the foundational requirement for academic excellence.
I am a fierce defender of traditional public schools. To promote our district, I will focus on:
Early Retention: Expanding Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK). When young families experience our high-quality educators and communities early on, they will choose to stay.
Academic Excellence: Protecting and expanding elite academic, arts, and career technical programs so our students remain nationally competitive.
Fair Accountability: Public money requires a public quality guarantee. I will demand that private institutions receiving taxpayer dollars meet the exact same rigorous accreditation and testing standards as our public schools.
By providing a superior education, we will prove our schools are the best choice.
