Why are you running for the State Board of Education? What is your vision of success for this role?

As a Las Vegas native and 3rd generation Nevadan, I have a great deal of pride in our state, but it’s frustrating to see that we are not yet providing all of our students with the type of high-quality education that they deserve. As a former teacher, principal, and now as an education non-profit leader and current member of the NV State Board of Education, I know what our students are capable of and what it takes to improve results. My motivation for running again for this position is to ensure that significantly more kids across Nevada receive equitable educational opportunities and that we improve outcomes for all kids.

My vision for success in this role includes 1) helping to engage and rally community stakeholders in developing a vision for our education system, 2) choosing a few key priorities under the purview of the State Board that have the potential to impact student outcomes and making traction on those priorities, and 3) helping the State Board and others focus our time and energy on the research-based practices that matter most for our kids.

How do you define student success? What experience do you have and what role do you intend to play in advocating for student success?

Success occurs when students are prepared to pursue any goal that they have for their future and are equipped to lead fulfilling lives where they are able to experience social and economic mobility for themselves and their families. I also define success by the extent to which students are active contributors to our community.

I have dedicated my career to supporting students — serving as a teacher and principal, and now in my role working with states, districts, and schools to improve education outcomes. Over time I have gained an in-depth understanding of teacher recruitment and development, improving instructional practices, early childhood education, literacy, and school transformation. I intend to utilize all that I have learned, along with my commitment to our community and prior experience on the State Board, to advocate for the policies and practices that will lead to greater student success.

On the 2022 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), fourth-grade students, in Nevada, scored 6 points lower in math and 7 points lower in reading when compared to 2019. If elected, how can you use your position to ensure Nevada stops following this national trend and starts leading the way for student outcomes?

There are a few ways the State Board of Education can address this trend. First, the State Board plays a role in approving curricular materials that districts can choose for students. Right now, many districts and schools across the state are not using effective materials in the classroom. At a foundational level, improving math and reading scores will require us to provide all students with high quality, grade-appropriate materials.

Through policy and regulation, partnership with the NV Department of Education staff, and advocacy with other decision makers, the State Board can promote specific instructional practices, programs, and approaches that have the potential to provide students with the tools and resources they need to improve achievement outcomes. For example, not too long ago our current State Board members approved a set of recommendations for how the state can better invest in supporting multilingual learners.

Finally, the State Board also regularly reviews achievement data from across the state and can play an important role in elevating our current results to a broader audience and can collaborate with the legislature to advocate for policies that will help to address these trends.

What, if any, barriers currently exist to educational excellence and equity for every student? If elected to the State Board of Education, how will you help eliminate these barriers?

The biggest barrier we face is that we currently don’t have a shared vision for educational excellence. This leads to a variety of well-intended efforts and initiatives that might help us to make small gains but because these efforts are not all aligned to a clear vision, we haven’t yet been able to make substantial improvements for our students. This is a barrier that must be addressed by our entire community and can’t be done by any single individual. However, I intend to contribute to the solution by using my position on the State Board to work closely with other decision making bodies, state and local leaders, community organizations, and students and families to help move us closer to having a shared vision of excellence.

We also have many other barriers that need to be addressed that are critical to our success, including: providing equitable access to the supports and resources students need to be successful, lack of robust early interventions and early childhood learning experiences, and ensuring that we have the educator workforce that we need for our schools, to name a few.

What do you believe are the top three most persistent challenges facing the State Board of Education? What is an example of a bold approach you would propose to address one of those challenges?

Because the State Board has been assigned a variety of tasks and responsibilities, one of the challenges the board has faced is the ability to stay focused on a subset of the most impactful topics. To address this I would propose that we clarify at the beginning of each year where we want to focus the majority of our time, be vigilant with how we are actually spending our time and what we are putting on our agendas, and regularly audit our efforts to ensure we are staying as focused as possible.

Another challenge in our education system is that we have dozens of committees, commissions, and working groups focused on a variety of specific topics within our education system. Often times there can be overlapping responsibilities and missed opportunities to collaborate around shared priorities. This same challenge is true for the State Board. To address this challenge, I would propose that we first open clear lines of communication with all of these other bodies and create regular communication channels between these groups. I think we could also do more with other decision making bodies to try to align on a few key priorities and then decide how each group might address the priorities given their authority and responsibility.

Finally, because of the size of the districts that the elected members on the State Board represent, community and stakeholder engagement can be challenging. We should work to create systems that ensure we hear from a wider variety of community members on any given topic.

Research suggests that more than 50% of a board meeting should be focused on student outcomes. How would you ensure the board allocates this amount of time to student outcomes?

The State Board is designed to focus on improving outcomes for students across Nevada. Given this, my expectation is that the Board should spend the vast majority of its time focused on outcomes. If topics that come before the Board cannot be linked to improving student outcomes I will continue to raise questions about how we are spending our time. I will also work to make student outcomes a key part of every discussion.

One of the challenges that the State Board has faced in how we spend our time is that there are various initiatives, some of which don’t directly impact student outcomes, that the legislature has required the State Board to review or take action on. In these situations, we should aim to minimize the time we spend on these items where possible when the items are not as focused on student outcomes.

If elected to the Board, how would you approach challenging conversations and/or criticisms that might arise from fellow Board members, stakeholders, and the broader community?

My approach to challenging conversations or criticisms is to always listen first and try to understand the views of the other person and what I can learn from that perspective. I believe that it is important to look for common ground and ways to collaborate on particular issues. At the same time, I will also be transparent and communicate my views and the rationale for my decisions. It is critical to keep our focus on students and improving education and not waste time focused on personal issues that can distract from the work at hand.

In 2020, the Board of Education’s Statewide Plan for the Improvement of Pupils set a mission to improve student achievement and educator effectiveness “by ensuring opportunities, facilitating learning, and promoting excellence.” What key indicators would you use to assess the Board’s progress towards accomplishing this mission?

Right now the Statewide Plan for the Improvement of Pupils (STIP) is focused mostly on inputs and not enough on measurable outcomes and includes dozens and dozens of priorities and initiatives. Because the development of the next version of the STIP is getting started, I will continue to advocate to streamline and simplify this plan as well as make sure that we are including specific metrics that will help us to understand the progress we are making over time.

While the next version of the STIP will hopefully look different from the current version, some of the measures that are important to include are:

-Students achievement outcomes in core content areas and in key grade levels

-Graduation rates and other indicators of college/career readiness

-Measures related to the recruitment and retention of our educator workforce

-Growth measures for school performance and improvement

-Student attendance and persistence

-Access to high quality early childhood programs

-School culture and climate

In a recent survey, 77% of Nevada residents agreed that parents should be able to send their children to the public school they feel is best for their child, even if it is outside of their neighborhood. Do you agree? Please explain your reasoning.

Yes. Our goal should be to ensure that every child has access to an excellent public school in their own neighborhood. However, given that our kids only have one shot at their PK-12 education and that we have not yet provided all kids with excellent neighborhood schools, it’s our moral obligation to find other solutions.

The following question was submitted by a current public high school student: How will you ensure students are put at the forefront of the decision making process as a member of the State Board of Education, and what accountability measures would you put in place to make sure this happens?

First and foremost, we need to elevate student voice in our decision making. It can be easy for decision making bodies to become disconnected from the day-to-day experiences and realities that our students, families, and educators face and so we must continue to engage with these groups, spend time in schools and in our communities, and learn as much as we can so that we can make informed decisions rooted in these realities.

In addition to the individual time that State Board members should spend engaging with our community, I also believe that we should focus some of our time at every meeting on better understanding the experiences of our students and the impact that our decisions have on them.