Hello!

My Priorities are as follows:

Maintain the broad and extensive curricular and extra-curricular offerings that are the strength of the Lakewood City Schools: (see here for more information about current offerings)

 

Expand elementary school day to restore music and PE, and keep Art and STEM: 

If we expand the school day by 40 minutes, we can restore music and PE to 100 minutes a week and Art

and STEM can also have 100 minutes a week. That would give the teachers of these classes time to

teach the course of study and give our homeroom teachers and extra planning period. It would leave

Digital Literacy to be taught when the students go to the library with their classroom teacher.

 

Communicate consistently and openly with the community:

As we have seen this past spring there was not a great deal of details concerning very drastic changes in

the elementary school day. As a district we face a future that will have many challenges from possible

building closing, relocating FSO, levies and possible reduction of forces that will cause reduction to the

academic offerings. The public should have a voice. We should all know the details of the issues to be

able to have successful conversations. We should all be partners in our schools.

Create policy that reflects the importance of a Human Resource Department:

Focus on the enhancing the five types of Human Resources- Recruitment and Staffing (Staffing and recruiting cannot exist without each other, but they are not the same); Employee Relations; Learning and Development; Performance Management; Company Culture (see more here).

 

Create an enhanced school day- what does this mean?:

Before and after school programming that would consist of homework assistance, arts and crafts, small

group games that teach sharing and confidence, activities, all led and supervised by retired teachers

who understand our curriculum.

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Listen and respond to the needs of classified staff- who are classified staff?:

Classified staff includes maintenance, custodial, secretarial, IT, food services and recreation staff.

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Increase enrollment:

We need to figure out why students are leaving the Lakewood Schools. Some say

that we should have programming before and after school that helps students with homework

assistance, activities, arts and crafts, games that build confidence and teaching sharing all run by retired

Lakewood teachers.

We need to figure out how to service our gifted population, challenge them and give our teachers the resources they need to provide this student population with the differentiation that they need.

We need to protect the arts and music because people move the Lakewood City Schools because of the

importance that we have placed on the arts.

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Fiscal responsibility: 

Everyone at the schools is a steward of the dollars given to us by the Lakewood community. As a team

we have been able to extend the last levy through 2025-2026.

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Reduce screen time: 

The irony is that we supply all of our students with ipads and chrome books. Screen time has become of

a great concern. We are cutting the subjects that make students turn off their screens (PE, Music, and

Art). We need to encourage and train our teachers to use activities that require students to talk to each

other, be creative, build relationships, and learn together, thereby strengthening social emotional skills and

building an inclusive learning environment.

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