I believe every student should have access to quality education and each student should feel connected, and engaged in their academic career in the Deforest Area School District.

The major priority for my term in office is to continue to improve students’ emotional well-being. As a mother of two children in the district, I believe this is the key to tapping into each student. Every student has the ability to learn. I will continue to make sure each student has access to an equal quality of education. 

I find many of our teachers are challenged with the task of the re-teaching basic curriculum, social, and emotional skills to our younger students. We need to continue our SEL(Social Emotional Learning) work in all grades K-12 and make sure all students have mental and emotional support. We should also make sure we are providing support to all of our staff in the schools. This pandemic did not just affect students but it also affected our staff who are the direct link to our students. We need to make sure we are supporting their mental health as well.

In our schools, we need to celebrate our students, staff, families, and community members in our district through their stories. Building these connections will help break down barriers and create a community where people would listen to each other and be brave enough to share their stories with each other. This will create connections between everyone no matter their color, religion, ethnicity, cultural, and political views. Anything less will not be tolerated.

We need to make sure we have a balance of over-representation with underrepresentation in our curriculum. It is not that students can’t learn but the question is have we ignited the flame to make them excited about learning? We have to make sure we are keeping our education curriculum exciting for all students. By balancing out representation in the curriculum, our students can begin to have a meaningful dialog and feel comfortable about their differences with each other.