VOTE411 Voter Guide

I spent 32 years in public education in Indiana, teaching high school mathematics and coaching several sports. Thirty of those years were spent in FWCS. After retiring, I was elected to the FWCS Board in 2010 and am currently finishing my fourth term. I was president of the board from 2017 to 2020. I have closely studied and followed K-12 education law and policy in Indiana and understand the challenges public education is facing. Those challenges include decreasing funding, negative attitudes about public education from elected officials and decreasing support from the federal government. Despite these challenges, I am proud that FWCS is fiscally sound and is able to provide a wide variety of academic opportunities and clubs for students.

The school board is responsible for setting district policy. In that process, the board should seek input from all stakeholders, including students, staff, taxpayers and community leaders. One policy we do not currently have is a policy on the use of Artificial Intelligence by students and staff. If elected, that policy is one that I would work for FWCS to adopt.

One concern currently in education is the use of technology by students in the classroom. We do not have a policy on technology use in the classroom and I believe FWCS should have one. Personally, I would like to see restrictions on use of technology in all grades, but especially for younger students. Especially in K-4, student activities should be focused on hands-on learning, project based learning, relationships and cooperation, play, physical activity , the arts, reading books and other non technological activities. I also believe there should be some limits on technology use in all grades.

I have worked with well over 300 children rehearsing to perform in children's theater shows that I wrote. I have a good notion of what catches their attention and how to present information so it is easily learned. While writing and directing scripts, I learned how to incude information as part of an adventure, making it easy to learn, and so the child recognizes how to handle such situations in life. I have paid attention to the real world of schools, regulation and funding as I attempted but could not achieve creating a charter school. I also have the curious, figure-out-solutions mind, and bold but polite, empathetic personality, to prompt the board to explore all the details and question if a proposed expenditure is best.

School boards should listen to all points of view, including the children who were not in your list there. A reason I defend school choice is that the competition naturally influences pleasing the customer, which in this case is the parent who may stick with the more stable public school or might seek out something different. School boards need to improve their method of receiving and sorting and recording opinions from parents, tax payers, legislators, teachers and children. The short period allowed to a person to speak at the school board can seem insultingly, frustratingly short. FWCS does have a Contact page on its website now, where an question can be asked and an answer received. Continuous complaints should go to the board.

I would stop applying one policy to the entire district if it is an either/or type thing. Survey parents what they want: armed teachers or not? biologic gender or transgender assigned restrooms or a third all-genders restroom? sex education or not? choice of history curriculums? phonics or whole word? cell phone rules? consequences for misbehavior? face masks or not when an infection is going around? The reason is to know how many want this or that, so FWCS can assign this school or this classroom that policy, method or rule different from another school or classroom. It sounds complicated, but first you figure out what choices can be created in the space, staff, budget and scheduling you have, and only offer choices that can be done.