Name the three key things you would like to accomplish as a member of the State School Board of Education: (question from selection committee)

      I have a dream that we can someday solve the equality on funding issues across the state.  Currently discrepancies occur between large and small districts, rural and urban schools, charter and traditional education schools, students in the public school systems and homeschool/private education students.  Funding equality is going to take a lot of discussion between many stake holders, and I would be naive to believe that it could be solved in several discussions. Solving the funding issues will require training and understanding of the current budgeting processes.  We will need to look back in history and discover the “why” behind many of the current processes.  We will need to look at other states and analyze what is working and not working in their states.  This research will allow us to create the best budget plan for the state of Utah.  Funding equality will require many tough discussions between all stake holders to develop a plan that is functional and understandable.  This will also require many of us to step back from and sacrifice some of our pet projects.

Recently the loss of local control has become a great issue in education.  We need to hold fast to Utah’s vision of education.  According to the United States Constitution it is Utah that is responsible for educating our students.  We need to hold fast to our principles and goals of “keeping the promises” to the students.  When appropriate we should look at federal programs, but this should never be an end all.  We should not be satisfied with what everyone else is doing.  Utah needs to raise the bar if we want the best education program.  This requires we maintain local control to look at our students and their needs and then develop a formula for their success.  This should be a continually evolving process as the needs of Utah students change from year to year.  The Utah Board of Education needs to continually review the rules they pass to ensure that we are not hampering the local choice of school districts and charter schools.   We need to make sure at a state level we do not encroach upon the local school boards by developing what seem like good and necessary rules but in actuality hampers the creativity of local school districts and charter schools to make data driving decisions for the students they are responsible for. 

I would like to focus on communication and voter apathy.  I am concerned with the growing number of citizens of Utah that do not know who their school board representative is.  It could be argued that members of the Utah Board of Education are the most crucial leaders in the state, as the balance of our students education rests in their hands. This lack of knowing who your representatives are allows for mistrust of the system and conspiracy theories to develop.  When people do not have a since of accountability they mistakenly think that the actions of the school board are done in secret and for political gain and not the best interest of the students.  I would like to work on developing stronger communications between all stake holders. Information should be readily available for constitutes in many forms such as websites, blogs, newsletters, mailings, and direct meetings.   I also believe that both parties have to be responsible for the communication and that as citizens become aware of public meetings they can have an impact on the results of these meetings. I believe that voter apathy can be solved by my 1-2-3 plan If every person will commit to becoming involved and an expert in 1 community group (city council, local school board, local community councils, planning commission, water commission, state legislature, federal legislature,  and my favorite Utah State Board of Education); then they attend that groups meetings or do research on them for just 2 hours a month; then share the information they learn with 3 people via in person or social media as a community we would become more involved and aware of all of the government programs that affect us. By using this 1-2-3 plan we could strength communication between governing bodies and the public and elevate some of the effects of voter apathy.