My Plans

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I fully support school choice because it allows families to select the education path that best suits their children’s needs. It’s important to ensure all of our schools receive adequate support and resources. 

During my previous six years I strongly pushed for the expansion of charter schools, homeschooling options, and alternative schools. In 2022, I was the board member who most strongly pushed for Academy Charter to get approval to have a high school. I also strongly fought for our charter schools to get expansions to be able to accommodate more students. 

Charter schools produce some of the highest achieving students in our district. In the class of 2024 alone, Palmer High School‘s valedictorian and both Career Tech’s valedictorian and salutatorian were all formerly students at Birchtree Charter School.

Additionally, I have been a strong advocate for our districts’ alternative schools. These schools provide crucial options for students who thrive in non-traditional educational settings.

Teachers should be fairly compensated for their work. Competitive salaries and benefits are essential to attract and retain high-quality educators, ensuring the best possible education for our students with lowered student-teacher ratios.

Our districts only job is to educate students, to do that we need smaller classes, experienced teachers, and teachers with hands on field experience. I want to reduce the amount of money we are allocating to district administration and put that money towards hiring more teacher. Just our superintendent who pushes for failed education practices makes over $100,000 more than our state governor at a crazy $253,000. The superintendents salary and benefits on its own could pay for 5 teachers in our district.

Safety, comfort, and the rights of all students is paramount. We need to balance this with appropriate transparent communication with parents, respecting students' rights and privacy while maintaining open dialogue with families.

Almost all of our school sports in the district are already co-ed. If a sport isn’t co-ed, we historically have had female athletes play on the male teams if they outperform the female team. The district already has policies regarding this situation that I have been a part of implementing over the last six years. Going forward it’s important to consider both competitive equity, the safety of all students, and rights of students and parents.

Decisions about school library content should involve educators, parents, and community members, considering age appropriateness, educational value, and local, state, and federal laws.

The safety of students and staff is a top priority. I believe in following the policies and guidelines established by the borough, state, and federal government. Measures taken for student safety should be based on facts and community input.