A Board vote isn't an abstract exercise — it lands in real classrooms, on real teachers' desks, and in real students' lives the very next day. After 30 years in public education — as a classroom teacher, a central office leader and technology professional, and an advisor/aide to an elected school board member — I've seen decisions made well, and I've seen them made poorly, often by people who cared deeply but didn't fully understand the consequences of what they were voting for. I will  walk in already asking the right questions: Does this serve our teachers, our staff, and our students — or does it serve something else?

That's the lens I'll bring to every conversation about compensation, curriculum, policy, and the budget. It's what EDUCATE means to me — building and sustaining the kind of workforce that attracts great teachers, keeps them here, and gives them the professional support and autonomy they need to do their best work. When teachers feel valued, students thrive. Everything else follows from that.

VB Schools has built something genuinely worth protecting in its CTE programs. The Tech Center alone offers 23 programs — from Welding and Electricity to Licensed Practical Nursing, Culinary Arts, Public Safety, and Electronics/Robotics — and in 2025, members of the graduating class earned a record 12,098 industry credentials while still in high school. Those aren't just statistics. They represent students who walked across the graduation stage already holding something tangible:  verified, marketable skills and a real head start on their future.

CTE is EMPOWER in its most concrete form. A student who completes the Welding program doesn't just learn to weld — they learn precision, problem-solving, and professional standards. A student in Public Safety, in a city with one of the highest concentrations of military and first responder families in the country, may be discovering a lifetime vocation. These experiences build the whole student in ways a standardized test cannot measure.

What I'll never allow to happen quietly — and what boards sometimes do without realizing it — is fail to fund or prioritize CTE when budget pressures mount because it's seen as less prestigious than AP coursework. Every time that happens, we tell a segment of our students that their path is less valued. That is the wrong message. My commitment is to make sure those doors stay open, stay well-resourced, and stay clearly visible to every student in the District — because going into a trade, the military, or directly into the workforce is no less valuable a choice than a four-year college. Every student deserves to graduate with options, and to make that choice clear-eyed.

Research is clear: students who feel safe, seen, and connected learn better, attend more consistently, and graduate ready for what comes next. Belonging isn't a feel-good add-on — it's a precondition for everything else we're trying to accomplish.

That means protecting the programs, pathways, and experiences — arts, CTE, dual enrollment, extracurriculars — that signal to every student, not just the college-bound ones, that their version of success matters here. It means funding the counselors and mental health supports that students increasingly depend on. And it means building the kinds of relationships with families and community partners that extend a student's sense of belonging well beyond the school building's front doors.

This is what EMPOWER and TOGETHER look like in practice — ensuring that when students walk across that graduation stage, they carry with them not just a diploma but a genuine set of experiences, skills, and confidence to start their next great chapter, whatever that chapter looks like.

Experience doesn't give you all the answers. Anyone who claims otherwise isn't being straight with you. Public education is dynamic — the challenges facing our teachers and students today aren't identical to the ones I navigated across three decades in this system, and the ones that emerge five years from now don't fully exist yet.

What experience gives you isn't a script. It's a foundation — a set of instincts, relationships, and hard-won context that helps you ask better questions, recognize warning signs earlier, and listen more effectively when real issues land in front of you in real time. It means the real conversation can start sooner and go deeper, because you already understand the terrain.

I've worked at nearly every level of public education and I know what it looks like when policy lands well on the people asked to carry it out — and when it doesn't. I know the difference between a budget cut that stings and one that genuinely damages a program students depend on. And I know that VB Schools will continue to teach me things I don't yet know. I intend to show up ready to learn them.

I believe in public education — not as a fallback option, but as the cornerstone of a thriving community. Public schools take every child. They don't turn students away because of what they believe, where their family comes from, or what they can afford. That open door is both a promise and a responsibility, and it's one I take seriously.

My commitment is simple: every student deserves a school that holds high expectations for their learning, their character, and their future — while also wrapping around them the support, the relationships, and the experiences they need to actually get there. That means meaningful partnerships with families and community organizations that extend a student's sense of belonging well beyond the schoolhouse doors. It means treating every child's path — college, trade, military, or workforce — with equal respect and equal investment. And it means ensuring that students thrive not just academically, but socially and as whole human beings ready to contribute to the world around them.