Activist Toolkit

1. What motivates you to seek office? What makes you qualified to serve? What metrics of success do you plan on holding yourself accountable to?

I am motivated to serve the community I live in wherever there are the best opportunities to align my skillset and background with my passions. I have spent most of my career in the charitable sector, working for several years as a director of youth-based programming before becoming a full-time consultant to nonprofit organizations in providing strategic development, research, evaluation, and the co-creation of programming. I received a PhD in Public Administration, studying the strategic actions that successful social entrepreneurship organizations (specializing in youth development and workforce development) apply to successfully scale for social impact. 

As a board member, we will have our strategic plan benchmarks to hold ourselves accountable. On a more personal level, I hope to remain increasingly self-aware and open to the voices contributing to the ongoing and robust dialog around what matters most for our children and their future development.

2. How do you make decisions?

I approach decision-making by first addressing the subjective side of the decision. How do my own interests, preferences, partiality, and background influence how I am oriented around a decision? After identifying the extent of the subjective side of making decisions and neutralizing any potentially overly subjective tendencies, I strive to be as objective and empathic as possible in consideration of how the consequences of decision made affects everyone involved. 

3. How will you work to ensure that D200 provides an excellent educational experience for all its students? What metrics of success do you plan on holding yourself accountable to?

This is done by providing a truly equitable playing field for all students. I do not believe that excellence and equity is a zero-sum game. If you play to each student’s strengths and interests by providing them with the opportunity and access to thrive in the pursuit of their strengths and interests, you foster a culture of equity and excellence. 

4. How would you approach the budgeting process?

The current board has set a great standard in following their evidence-based best practices model which compares OPRF’s spending with that of its peer districts. This model enables the board to understand the average spending among a variety of areas among all school districts, and gauge where OPRF either exceeds or falls below that average in spending. It is a great tool to better understand the nuances of the budgetary allocations, helping to both identify areas that need to be addressed and to also explain contextual characteristic unique to the budgetary needs of OPRF. 

5. Please discuss your thinking about D200’s Imagine project. Should the next phase go through the referendum process?

The Imagine Project has seen a dynamic convening of diverse community stakeholders huddle around the common goal of addressing our longstanding needs for facilities upgrades. The process has promoted good will, transparency, accountability and has seen a magnanimous philanthropic arm emerge in our community to assist in addressing the mounting financial burden associated with addressing these major facilities upgrades. The work of the Imagine project has been inspiring and has catalyzed a much-needed community-led approach to problem solving. 

Make no mistake, I am pro-referendum in principle. But it is also incumbent on all board candidates to acknowledge that regardless of our stance on referendums, we are not making this decision (after all, the current board has pledged to decide on the funding process before the new board convenes). As such, we need to be willing to - with an open mind - hear the rationale that informs the current board’s decision on how to fund this process, referendum or not. I trust that the current board is one of integrity and empathy, and cares deeply about limiting the tax burden of Oak Park River Forest homeowners. If they choose an option other than referendum, we need to objectively listen to the reasons guiding this decision not just because they’ve earned the right to be heard, but also because if we are elected to the board we will be charged, as the fiduciary agents of D200, with the responsibility of following through with implementing whatever funding option the current board decides upon. 

6. Special education is mandated by federal law. How can D200 work to better provide an excellent education for students in need of special education?

First, we need to continue to follow the data on best practices in serving the special education population of our school and accordingly continue to build our capacity to meet their needs. Again, we are not a fully equitable institution imbued by a commitment to excellence unless everyone is presented the opportunity to thrive according to their strengths, interests, and skillsets.

7. What is D200 doing well with respect to providing all students with an equitable education and what could it be doing better?

Regarding racial equity, D200 has made great strides in committing to the use of tools of accountability like the REAT (Racial equity Assessment Tool). We must do better to recruit and retain teachers of color. We must commit to a structure and process that enables hiring early, investigate innovative incentives around residencies and loan forgiveness. Overall, D200 is headed in the right direction in fostering a community committed to a high standard of racial equity. Let us endeavor to make it an exemplary effort to all our peers. 

Though there are some exciting existing vocational training opportunities with Triton, we need to create more of a breadth and depth of these vocational/skills-based opportunities for our student population. This is an issue of equity when considered from the vantage point of ensuring each student has the access to the opportunities that best align with their strengths. We need to expand our existing programmatic efforts with Triton College, while also exploring new avenues of partnerships with city colleges and regional employer pipelines. 

8. What is your impression of D200’s Access for All detracking curriculum redesign program and of detracking efforts generally?

I think it is the result of a carefully considered and executed process designed to create a culture of equity and excellence. As stated before, the equity and excellence zero-sum game is a myth. I am excited to see the data returns after the first year of its implementation. 

9. What lessons learned from the pandemic’s early years do you believe will continue to be applicable to the ways that schools operate?

I think there are several lessons here. On a positive note, we can say that as a community, we were able to adapt to and pivot to new ways of doing things that were previously unimaginable. In this sense we were resilient and adaptive. But the pandemic also laid bare our lack of capacity to serve our students mental health needs. Our already taxed system of under-staffed mental health support professionals was completely overwhelmed by the need. Beyond a greater need in capacity, we need to more closely examine how our intra-school communication is conducted between support staff. 

10. District 200 has taken some steps to move away from policing and surveillance in schools toward restorative justice, mental health supports, and other services in schools. Do you feel like these moves have been successful? Why or why not? What work do you believe remains to be done in this area?

These moves in and of themselves are a success because we are following the data on what works and what doesn’t. Do we see the immediate effect of these changes yet? Probably not so much. A systems-wide commitment to restorative practice and an increase in the capacity to meaningfully serve all our students’ mental health needs is not an overnight fix. It is a cold comfort without question to not have an overnight solution, but the methods embraced now are the right path forward for creating the safest and most thriving school community environment. 

11. What approach should D200 take towards intergovernmental cooperation initiatives such as the Collaboration of Early Childhood Development? Are there other specific initiatives that you would like to implement or expand upon?

The Program Services Model of Family Engagement, Health and Development, (Early) Learning, and Community Engagement is not a model that informs only the Early Childhood learning context, but instead provides a model to apply to the several different iterations of both individual and family development in a community. D200 should always be mindful of these guiding principles and values established at the early childhood level and how they should always serve as cornerstones that inform the ongoing development of curriculum at the high school level. 

Without question I would prioritize a more coordinated and high-quality early childhood system. The data on investing in early-childhood programming is unassailable. From a policy maker's vantage point, this should be an absolute. Commitment to anything less than this would be a dereliction of the role the electorate trusts that you will undertake. D200 can use its voice to speak to the need for an inviolable commitment to the principles and values that inform early childhood education, and that this commitment includes crafting curriculum that prioritizes the application and continuum of these principles and values amid the varying iterations of a child's development.  

12. What approach should D200 take towards intermunicipal cooperation with neighboring communities? Are there specific initiatives that you would like to implement or expand upon?

The Imagine Project process has illustrated how much we can learn by reaching out to our peer school districts. As for specific initiatives I would like to implement, I do believe that expanding our intermunicipal cooperation to improve our vocational/skills based/certificate opportunities is worth a look. Additionally, it behooves us to look at broadening our intermunicipal relationships in consideration of creating a public service component to our school’s curriculum. 

13. Public Schools have been faced with deciding whether to remove books from their shelves if a parent or group of parents deem the content to be inappropriate, too controversial or objectionable. How would you handle this issue and how should D200 handle this question?

I am opposed to indulging groups of parents advocating for the censorship of/removal of books from our library. Let’s instead commit to having a discussion around the elements present in the book that have triggered such a coordinated response. History has shown that acquiescing to activist groups around censorship and book removal is a slippery slope. 

14. Do you see a role for the D200 Board in ensuring that the climate at OPRFHS is welcoming to students in minority populations, whether racial religious identity, LGBTQ, etc.? What specific actions would you propose?

I think we need to continue to follow the recommendations set forth by the Committee for Equity and Excellence at OPRF. One of the ways we do this is by instilling a culture where we not only embrace but maintain fidelity to whatever best practices indicate the instruments of accountability should be. This is how we begin to restore trust in our institutions and provide a transparent metric to the commitment to meaningfully change. 

Ideally, as a board member I want to see OPRF be an exemplar in forging a culture where no one feels compromised, excluded, insecure or at-risk. I don’t think this is a pollyannish pursuit. We can create a community of unconditional love and respect in our schools if we want to put in the hard work to make it so.

15. A new report issued by the Centers of Disease and Control found that in 2021, very large numbers of students experienced poor mental health. Twenty-two percent of students seriously considered attempting suicide and ten percent attempted suicide. These feelings were found to be more common among LGBQ+ students, female students, and students across racial and ethnic groups. What can D200 do to address this trend?

Prior to the onset of the pandemic, we were already failing to meet our students’ mental health needs. The pandemic poured accelerant on what had been an increasingly worsening public health crisis among our teens. Acceptance of this crisis is the first step, building capacity to support our students meaningfully and sustainably is the next. When the data says that the most common reports of mental health suffering come from traditionally repressed groups, we have gaping wounds of inequity yet to be sufficiently addressed. So much of the net problems we see manifested at our school and among our children stem from a failure to meaningfully address issues of equity. We must do better. 

16. The School Board’s primary responsibility is oversight of the Superintendent. District 200 recently hired a new superintendent, Greg Johnson, who was promoted to the position of superintendent in 2021. What criteria will you use to evaluate the success of Mr. Johnson’s tenure?

Hitting performance benchmarks are important, but equally so is the taking of stock of the movements made that fall into the “long game” category. What has the administration done in this regard? Where are the commitments to the things that we know data tells us will be fruitful in the long run but may not yield the immediate “sexy” returns that many leaderships seek to justify their actions. I will be looking for an accountability in leadership that recognizes the personal short-term risks involved in making embracing and executing the bold moves that often take time to show their worth.