Activist Toolkit

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

I feel an enormous debt of gratitude toward the community and the district for what it’s provided my family and my kids; service is the one way I have of repaying that debt. I believe I possess a set of skills, experiences, and perspectives that will be useful in this moment: as a lawyer (with public sector union contract negotiation experience) trained to ask questions, listen, and synthesize new information; as a former member of the Imagine team who understands the reasoning behind the long-term facilities plan; and as someone with long experience in DEI as well as a firm commitment to restorative justice and restorative principles.  

2) How do you make decisions?

Particularly with difficult or complicated decisions, I will often try to articulate multiple competing narratives. I’ve found that by literally writing out the competing arguments, the best alternative becomes more clear and coherent. Articulating competing narratives also helps me identify what I know and what I don’t know, what I’m sure of and what I need to double check, which data are pivotal and which are noise. 

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?

I think we have to do several things:

• We have to continue to provide an excellent, rigorous curriculum for all students. 

• We have to ensure that all students have genuine access to this excellence. 

• We have to continue to attract and retain an experienced, skilled, innovative faculty. 

• We have to provide 21st century learning spaces suitable for our students and faculty. 

4) How would you approach the budgeting process?

The Board and Administration should continue to use its current evidence-based funding approach, with funding formulas set by state law as the rational starting point and specific reasons necessary for deviations from the EBF formulas.  

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

I am a strong supporter of Project 2; this project would solve many serious and longstanding facilities issues in our physical education spaces. More broadly I am a strong supporter of the Imagine plan, our long-term, comprehensive facilities master plan. 

Before Imagine Project 1, there had been no major capital improvements at OPRF since 1967. In other words, as a community, we kicked the can down the road for far too long. I’m grateful the current Board has approved the scope of Project 2, and has tasked the Community Finance Committee with researching and reacting to various funding strategies. 

The CFC has detailed a number of competing funding options, including strategies using capital construction bonds requiring a public referendum, DSEB bonds, debt certificates, an expected contribution from the Imagine Foundation of $12.5 million, and savings from future capital maintenance budgets due to replacement of the old facilities. The CFC has also identified the debt strategies used by peer high school districts in our region; other schools have used referendum bonds, DSEB bonds, and debt certificates, and sometimes all three. The best option for OPRF is one that keeps each property taxpayer’s burden the lowest, gives the District flexibility in coming years for future capital projects and emergency borrowing, and brings the fund balance to a rational (and safe) level. 

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

Many if not all families served by OPRF’s special education department form strong connections with the dedicated, hardworking teachers and staff who work with their students every day. The struggle for many families comes during the “onboarding” process into special education services. Families don’t know what to do, what to ask for, what their children’s rights are, and the full spectrum of services the high school is able to provide. Once a child has an IEP and is receiving services, families are often pleased. It’s the process of getting to that point that can be challenging. So taking a close look at that entry point, and doing a better job of helping families navigate it, would in turn help all students access the supports and services they need. 

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

Equity is a challenge to see and provide what each child uniquely needs in order to succeed. We are extremely fortunate to live in a supportive, well-resourced community. But, in part because of the sheer size of the student body, I think we still struggle with the “seeing” part of equity’s challenge. For too many kids, we still don’t fully understand all their strengths and needs. We make assumptions, we assess as best we can, we use categories as proxies–but we still too often fail to truly see what each child uniquely needs in order to succeed. A more holistic academic and socio-emotional assessment process that begins in middle school would help, as would more systematically accounting for evolving needs throughout the four years of high school.  

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

It’s way too early to make any judgments. We will need to track data very closely this spring, and in coming years, for any early indicators–and then we will need to push the Administration to identify and take specific actions based on this data. The first cohort of students in this initiative will graduate in May, 2026; the second cohort will graduate in 2027; and so on. The timescale of this initiative is long, but as a community and a culture we don’t really “do” long any more. So part of the Board’s job will be to continue to track data closely; insist on the supports, tweaks, or pivots necessary to ensure long-term success; to be fully transparent with families and the community about the initiative’s progress; and to consistently remind the community about the long time horizon. 

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

We learned just how important it is that every child feels connected to the school community–that each student feels welcomed and connected to a peer, a teacher, an activity, a sport, etc. When those connections are taken away, and students no longer feel connected to each other or to the greater school community, it can have devastating mental health consequences. We have to do all that we can to ensure that every single student forms and maintains bonds with students and teachers and feels welcomed and valued in our school community. 

We also learned that so much of teaching and learning today just cannot be easily replicated in a Zoom session. Our faculty are creative; much learning is student-led and collaborative; often learning goes in unexpected directions through the interactions of human beings in a physical classroom. We learned that we simply can’t replicate that experience–that creativity and excellence. The lesson for the future: let’s recognize and value the creativity and excellence of our faculty, and let’s provide our faculty with the facilities and resources they and our students deserve. 

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 these moves have been successful? Why or why not? What work do you believe remains to be done in this area?

We have not done nearly enough to bring restorative principles into the culture of OPRF. To be most effective, a restorative approach needs buy-in from all the adults in the building, and restorative principles have to be taught to all staff and all students. Currently we use restorative justice as the default in student disciplinary matters. That’s a great start. But we are nowhere near harnessing the power of restorative principles across the school community. 

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

I think we can make real progress by focusing on collaboration between D200, D97, and D90 in terms of curriculum and equity. Specific initiatives I am interested in exploring/expanding are (1) continuing our efforts on gun control at the state level; (2) addressing school starting times for teenagers on a statewide basis, as California has successfully achieved; and (3) a new joint student-led social media use initiative with D200 and feeder middle schools. 

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?

See answer to #11 above. I would support regional cooperation on school start times. 

13) Public schools have been faced with deciding whether or not 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 District 200 handle this question?

D200 policy describes a grievance procedure, requiring investigation and decisionmaking by the Administration and appeal to the Board, for any objection to educational materials. I believe in the judgment of our trained, professional school librarians. OPRF’s librarians have curated a terrific collection, and they have their fingers on the pulse of what our kids want to read and learn about. I trust our school librarians to make good decisions. 

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 or policies would you propose?

Of course. One subtle but important way we can support minority populations is through effective facilities solutions. There are many examples of how the Board has created and will continue to create a more welcoming climate through capital improvements. I’ll give you two. 

First, our new student commons is intended to provide all students with a place to be, from 7 am to 7 pm. Black students told the Imagine team in 2017 that they feel pushed out of the building at the end of the day, and that they have no place to go where they feel welcomed before or after school. The new student commons (the Welcoming Center) will serve as a hub, with access to all the things students will need before and after school: the tutoring center, the library, the maker space, the student activities center, the learning stairs, and eventually faculty offices, the nurse’s office, collaboration spaces with whiteboards, and so on. By providing a place to be–whether to study, collaborate, or just hang out–we help students feel supported, connected to each other, and connected to the school community.  

Second, we can support transgender, gender-questioning, and gender nonbinary students by providing gender-neutral bathrooms and locker facilities. Imagine facing a potentially traumatic experience every time you need to go to the bathroom. By constructing more gender-neutral bathrooms across the entire campus (and, in Project 2, building gender-neutral locker room facilities for the first time) we support this student population. 

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?

There’s evidence that there is an even greater mental health crisis at OPRF than at other high schools in the region. We need to start by treating this crisis as a crisis. OPRF is currently addressing the mental health needs of students through new programming one class period per month, across all grades and taught by all faculty. It’s great that we’re doing this. It’s also not enough. We need to consider additional partners, supports, programs, and attention to this issue, across the board. 

We also need to help families understand what supports are available. Too many parents are faced with a child in crisis, with no idea of who to turn to at OPRF, or what’s available, or how to access it. Students have suffered trauma during the pandemic, and it’s manifesting in various ways–kids are more anxious, more depressed, checked out, acting out, using substances. We need to be partners to parents in dealing with all of this. 

Finally, our faculty and staff are struggling, too. They too suffered trauma over the course of the pandemic–teaching eight periods a day over Zoom, for many with their own children underfoot. We’ve already begun to forget how difficult this was, how much we demanded of teachers, how they delivered at personal cost. We must help our faculty and staff continue to recover.  

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?

The Superintendent and the Board agree on annual goals for the Superintendent and his Administration each school year; the Superintendent’s evaluation is linked directly to completion and/or progress on these goals.