As your Councilmember, I will work to:

• Reform a flawed budgetary model. Essential positions should not be at risk year-to-year because of quirks in a formula. We know what successful schools look like. They are not campuses with skeleton staffs.

  In many Ward 3 schools, parents raise significant funds for additional programming and staff, including partner teachers in elementary school classrooms. Why? Because going beyond the bare minimum when it comes to staffing improves education. That is even more the case for at-risk, ELL, special education, and other students with higher needs. Our teachers are more effective when they have additional support. It makes differentiation easier and improves academic performance.

  When considering the budget, the Council must recognize that successful schools are multifaceted and dynamic institutions.  Learning does not just happen in classrooms.  Many different adults play a role in helping to guide and mentor young minds.  We undercut our schools when we fail to invest in those other adults (e.g. specialists, coaches, librarians, mental health professionals, and counselors). PTOs should not have to raise significant money to fund partner teachers and other positions.  Budgets reflect our values and we need a Council that recognizes that strong schools are the foundation for a successful city. 

• Provide schools with sufficient funding to serve the full range of student needs.  Schools must address children’s physiological and emotional needs for safety in order to set the stage for intellectual development. It is my personal belief, based on my classroom experience and observation of education reform debates, that too often well intentioned policy officials who genuinely want to address achievement gaps and learning loss focus only on academic standards and fail to fully account for the emotional work that must be done in order for learning to occur. Not only does this myopic oversight undermine efforts to increase academic progress, it puts too many children, disproportionately Black and brown children, on the path to prison. A successful school is a learning community where children are richly supported. We should not lower our expectations, but we also cannot expect schools to adequately meet student needs when the District fails to provide sufficient funding to make that possible. At a minimum, the Council must ensure that school-based mental health services reach all students.  

• Demand that DCPS engage in a real dialogue with families and community-members about the MacArthur High School project. The 1st stage of this process was terrible. Parents and community members engaged in a one-way dialogue with DCPS and got little in return. The deadlines kept getting pushed back and parents and students have little clarity about what the new school will look like. There is real anxiety about whether the new school will offer the same range of academic and extracurricular offerings that their child would have had access to at Jackson-Reed (formerly Wilson) High School. We need a better process, including real planning around the transit-related concerns.

• Invest in additional school facilities to address overcrowding in Ward 3. With few exceptions, Ward 3’s public schools are at or well-beyond capacity.  According to DCPS projections, this is a problem that will only get worse.  By 2028, DCPS expects around 1300 more elementary school students in the Wilson feeder pattern than there are seats. A similar deficit is projected at Deal and Wilson.  The District needs to proceed with construction of a new elementary school and high school in the Foxhall/Palisades area, planning for which is already underway.  Doing so will help reduce overcrowding at the high school level. Going forward, it will be important to push DCPS to explore ways to reduce overcrowding at Deal, something that will likely require significant investment in expanding or building new facilities.  

  Addressing overcrowding will also improve the ability of local schools to serve the full range of student needs. A lack of sufficient facilities has, unfortunately, prevented some families from sending their child to their local neighborhood school.

• Ensure that schools with higher needs receive the funding they deserve.  Kids in every ward deserve to have excellent neighborhood schools and we shouldn’t tolerate anything less.  I will fight to make sure Ward 3 schools get the resources they need, but I will also be equally focused on ensuring that all DC public schools receive the support they deserve.  

• Demand that new policies and initiatives be developed through an open process and good faith engagement with principals, teachers, and parents, and not behind closed doors in a conference room. New policies and requirements should not be rushed without time for consultation with all stakeholders, analysis by experts, and some space for introspection. I am not opposed to “education reform” by any means — we must do more to improve outcomes for all students in all schools. But I am extremely wary of top-down plans dreamed up by adults sitting around a conference table, especially when it seems like those plans were hatched without much consultation with classroom teachers or principals. I can recall many examples of laudable initiatives that had the right goals and that could have greatly improved outcomes for my students but largely fell flat because of design flaws that could have been easily avoided by thorough engagement with teachers and principals.