- District Testing: Our students are over-tested. For some students, up to 25% of instructional days are interrupted by standardized testing. Only a handful of these assessments are mandated by the state. Most are district-mandated benchmarks, Common Formative Assessments, and MAP tests. We need to reduce the number of instructional days disrupted by testing by at least half.
- Safety: Every student and teacher is entitled to expect a safe environment in their schools. School administrators need to be free from excessive paperwork so they are available to be present in the hallways. Furthermore, they should be allowed to permanently remove any student who threatens the safety of their schools.
- Professional Development: Meaningful professional development is a wonderful opportunity for teachers to broaden their skills as educators. All professional development should be meaningful to the teachers and their students. Otherwise, it is busy work that wastes teachers’ time. Teachers should be given more options to seek meaningful professional development opportunities and adequate time to collaborate with other teachers.
- Respecting Teachers’ Time: Probably the thing teachers need the most is more time. The district and campuses should not mandate any new initiatives without evaluating the amount of time they will cost teachers and offsetting that time by removing other tasks and duties from their responsibilities. Teachers need to have adequate time to devote to student learning and less busy work.
- Better Pay: While better pay alone will not solve the problems facing teachers, they should be able to earn enough to support themselves and their families without taking on a second or even third job. Teacher pay has not kept up with inflation, especially for veteran teachers. While we need to attract newly-certified teachers to the profession with generous starting pay, we will lose our most experienced and effective teachers if we ignore their needs. Experienced teachers should be compensated for their expertise.
- District budget: I support fiscally smart approach to the budget. I support assessing the need of a program or initiative before money is wastefully spent. Too much money is wasted on ineffective district initiatives that are applied unilaterally and without haphazardly. This is money that could be better spent on resources that enhance learning.