What's Important to Kaci

Classrooms:

All students have a right to learn. All teachers and educators have the right to teach. All parents deserve a voice in their child’s education.

Students and teachers in classrooms with larger class sizes often don't have as much time to work on necessary skills and standards as classes with smaller class sizes. We can adjust policy to meet our schools' needs. Classrooms that have larger sizes also tend to have more disruptions, and classrooms that have frequent disruptions- whatever the reason- also take away a student's right to learn as well as a teacher's right to teach. We can facilitate processes and clear policies for these issues and help both our students and our teachers be successful and feel valued.

Curriculum chosen and vetted by professionals to be used over a considerable period of time builds stronger foundations for the future of both students and educators. We can be cognizant on the timing of curriculum changes and weigh the impacts of a change. Our students and our educators can never become highly skilled when we are changing the "how" we teach every few years. There is merit to updating and ensuring we are offering quality and research based curriculum, but we have to weigh the impact of asking teachers to learn new curriculum and asking students to try something new every few years.

Processes:

I hope to enhance the ways parents, community members, and staff have reliable and efficient ways to access information and engage with us. No one person has all the right answers. Some of the best ideas and solutions come from those around us. We need to be sure we are seeking those ideas and perspectives, as well as ensuring that our community has clear, accessible opportunities to offer their ideas!

• Parents should be able to reliably work alongside their teachers and schools for their child's education.

• Community members should have efficient access information and be proactive in issues that mean the most to them.

• Staff should have a reliable and efficient way to be validated, heard, and respected when it comes to their classroom and school's priorities and needs.

We can create more streamlined processes for our all stakeholders to be authentically involved in our school system. We are better when we work together, collaboratively.

Innovation:

Hot take- public school cannot possibly meet the needs of every single student. We are always learning more about people and the way they learn. Education needs to be a reflection of the flexibility and transformations of communities . I believe that our public schools need to have the ability to be innovative and adaptive to the population they serve. Educators in the classroom are brilliant at adapting to the needs of their students, but we can only ask so much of them before we need to start questioning the system and make authentic changes from within. Educator workload is already overwhelming and generally a large reason teachers leave the education field. We have to work together so teachers can teach and be responsive, and students and parents feel proud to be part of our public education system.

With this, I think it's important to address the charter school increase in the Valley. As mentioned above, public schools cannot meet the needs of every student. However, I hope to work together to create that innovation within our own system to ensure equity and stability for our students. We cannot fix a demand issue with more supply. We have more schools than we have students enrolled or even residing in Mesa County. We have to be very intentional about how, when, and why we open or even close schools. Our students and our community deserve a sustainable and accessible education system that meets their individual needs and does not impose hardship on their families to attend. This is why it is so important that our established schools are used to fill the needs our community is asking for; there are students and families who may want or need a specialized school, but lack access. This is why our leadership and our community need to be very intentional about bringing new schools to our valley. We are already pretty spread thin as it is.