My Core Values
Focus on Students
As your school board member these past four years, I have focused on providing all students the chance to grow and to succeed, to be nurtured and challenged in the classroom, to feel like they belong in their schools and are valued as individuals. Not simply tolerating but celebrating diversity and inclusion makes us stronger. When students feel welcomed and valued at school, they develop a sense of ownership; when they become involved in sports and social or academic clubs, then they value what they are doing in the classroom and become better learners.
We’ve had many attacks lately on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education, and a great deal of misunderstanding persists. We welcome diversity in schools. This simply means all students are welcome and should feel so. Equality dictates that all students receive instruction in math, for instance. Equity means the math we provide fits each student’s needs. For students who excel, we have and will continue to provide Advanced Placement courses to meet their needs, and likewise, for students who need extra supports to succeed in their learning, common sense dictates that we provide those supports. Equality means we all go to school. Equity means the school fits our needs. Inclusion goes beyond mere tolerance to suggest that all students, no matter what, are not just welcomed in our schools, but made to feel like they belong. Because they do! Attacks on children who are disabled, immigrants, LGBTQ+ (especially trans), or other communities who are marginalized are wrong-headed. Only through our honest commitment to addressing misconceptions will these children be able to thrive.
A strong academic focus is critical to helping students achieve and succeed after their time at school. Literacy, especially in the first years of school, is crucial to that success. All students need to have a rigorous curriculum which challenges them and enables them to succeed as adults. High achievement from all students should be our goal. We must continue to collect accurate data about student achievement, set short and long term goals, and assess our progress. We have gaps in our achievement, and we must focus on the growth of individual students as we and they narrow the gap between current assessment and the goals we will achieve.
I’ve taught Advanced Placement English at Las Cruces High School for over twenty-five years, and I’ve been a consultant for The College Board for over twenty years, so I’ve taught many students a very rigorous, college-level curriculum. I have also led many workshops and week-long institutes for various universities throughout the United States, helping teachers develop their teaching skills to match the rigor of the Advanced Placement Program. Long-term college graduation rate studies show that the most important indicator for success at a college or university is the rigor of a student’s high school curriculum. All students should have the opportunity to engage in challenging coursework which develops the critical thinking skills, and the discipline necessary to achieve in a post-secondary program of study.
Those who would ban books from our schools’ libraries have not been successful, and they will not chip away at our students’ rights to access appropriate reading materials on my watch. If a parent does not wish their child to have access to specific materials in our libraries, then parental safeguards for preventing such access are now and will continue to be in place. As an English teacher at Las Cruces High School for 34 years, I taught challenging, insightful, and horizon-expanding books to many students and was not surprised to find authors whose novels I had taught on the book banners’ list, one a Nobel Laureate. If the Nobel Prize for Literature carries no weight with book banners, then I am proud to oppose their efforts.
We should follow health professional’s guidelines to provide a healthy school environment, including testing and vaccination. All students, staff, and teachers deserve a safe place to learn and work. Science should govern our decisions regarding healthy places to learn. We require helmets when we send our students out on the football field, even though we know some students will get concussions. We should follow best practices to keep our students safe.
Empower Teachers and Educators
An effective school is one which empowers, encourages, and trusts teachers and education support staff to do their jobs. What happens in our classrooms is the key to student success, so when all staff are focused on creating an effective learning environment, and a culture of high expectations and achievement is the norm, then educators can succeed at their task.
Effective professional learning which engages educators with proven strategies to help students learn needs to be the cornerstone of our use of teachers’ time. Strategies which challenge students to think critically and directly increase learning in the classroom should be our priority. And we need to trust educators to use their time wisely, not fill their planning time with matters which keep them from their focus on their students. And if we are to attract the best candidates into teaching, we need to increase pay. We have made great improvements in educator’s salaries in the past four years, but more needs to be done. We must support professionals, assistants, support staff, substitute teachers, and of course, parents and the community—everyone in the education community needs to have their voices heard if we are to foster better schools.
Teachers and education support staff need to be supported and encouraged to improve through the evaluation system. Thankfully, the divisive system over-emphasizing test scores which was put into place some years ago is now a thing of the past. Just as educators work with many aspects of children in their classroom, so the evaluation system should work with multiple aspects of educators.
Educators address the physical needs of students such as health and nutrition, their psychological and emotional wellness, counseling and advising needs, all in addition to the academic curriculum. Educators in Las Cruces face some staggering statistics regarding the children in our school. In the past four years, New Mexico has begun to provide meals for all students who attend our schools. When I was a teacher, I knew first-hand that a hungry student will focus on an empty stomach more than any lesson a teacher is giving. About three quarters of our students are in danger of going without nutrition, so providing meals at schools is essential. Some students require extra supports since they are English Language Learners. We need to address multiple needs of disadvantaged students and families and recognize that our community and schools and stronger when we empower educators.
Students today are emerging from the lasting emotional and academic effects of Covid, having been through a most difficult pandemic, and many are still feeling disengaged from school. One of our board’s main areas of focus is on chronic absenteeism. We need to continue to address the learning gap and the greater emotional and social toll which this pandemic has placed on Las Cruces. Resources like our Family Support Center and programs like Community Schools which integrate health and social needs into the schools involve parents, students, and educators to address multiple factors which keep our students from doing their best in school.
Federal policies are adversely affecting the funding of our local schools. With the threat of withholding funds from states and school districts, the Department of Education has created a difficult budgeting situation, and I anticipate that we may likely face significant cuts to our budget in the next years. The decisions we make as a school board will be both very difficult and critical, and though I do not look forward to cuts, I will work hard to make sure that they are least disruptive to our students’ education.
Involve Parents and the Community
Parents, guardians, caregivers, grandparents, neighbors, retired volunteers all have a role in helping students achieve. Programs like NEA’S Read Across America and the Children’s Reading Alliance help children become readers, the critical component of success in early grades. Promoting innovative programs like Girls Can! or ‘Girls Who Code’ opens doors at an early age for students. Creating Community School partnerships throughout our district is crucial, as research indicates that when communities collaborate with and support their teachers, then student success follows.
The Family Support Center adjacent to LCPS Central Office is in its first phase, having opened within the past two years. It provides critical resources available to parents to help all our students achieve. Our school board and district personnel are seeking additional capital outlay to expand the center and integrate parent and community supports in a vital way. Services include developing a central community hub for supports, including health, mental health, parent engagement in their children’s schools, McKinney Vento (homeless students), bilingual and emerging multilingual support, and migrant student resources.
Career and technical education (CTE) is greatly needed in our schools, so that students see a connection between their academic classes and their future careers. CTE Programs connect students with career pathways and dual credit options, which can open doors for students which they might otherwise not realize are possibilities. We need to encourage innovation, involvement, and community partnerships to help engage our students. Our district is in the process of creating a CTE Center to expand this essential program.
Transparency on the board is essential, so that all stakeholders feel like their opinions and input is considered and weighed before decisions are made. This is especially true with setting priorities in the budget. Meaningful participation by parents in this process ensures that everyone has their say. In the past four years, our school district has developed a year-round budget process to involve the community in setting priorities. Parent committees and town halls engage greater interaction in the process. We have an up-to-date dashboard for each school and its budget which parents can access through the LCPS website. When the board debates and creates policy, we seek out community input so that as many stake-holders as possible are included in the process.
We are in the process of implementing entry-point screening in our middle schools and high schools to help make students safe at school. Though certainly not without problems in its rollout, the Evolv Weapons Detection Systems will provide another layer of security. Also, our K-5 and 6-12 schools are now more secure through remodeling of locking vestibules at each school’s entry. Our board continues to require oversight and testing of school entry vulnerabilities since the majority of our schools were not originally designed with limited access in mind.
Develop Policy to make our Vision a Reality
School boards advise superintendents, set policies, and scrutinize budgets, but must stay out of the day-to-day workings in the schools. School board policies create a vision of the priorities for our schools, and members of the school board work to achieve that vision though careful fiscal monitoring of the school budget, and through careful reflection of the board’s policies.
For the past three years, I have worked as our school board’s Finance Subcommittee Chair as well as Board Secretary. This continues the work I did as a teacher, when I served on many district-wide and school committees over my years at LCPS, among them the budget committee. Board members establish priorities for the budget and then they must be able to read the fine print because it is in the details of our budget that meaningful change can occur. The budget is our statement of belief, an ethical and I would say, moral document, and it is one not written in stone. LCPS has a very large budget with much of it naturally prioritized into salaries and benefits, but each dollar spent on any line item in the budget needs to be clearly necessary and should match the priorities established by the board.
Our school board’s work on policy over the past four years has ensured that sensible yet visionary policies and accompanying regulations are in place. We have, for instance, addressed anti-bullying, safe and secure schools, environmental sustainability, new graduation requirements, Title IX, gender inclusive schools, and social media concerns. In the past two years, we have created a strategic plan to define that vision and provide a framework from which to implement it. My goal is to see that vision take root in the culture and climate of our schools and to help make its success possible.
