For about the next month, I'm going to lay out my foundational approach to public education, what I think we need to do moving forward to be successful in educating the students in our district, working and communicating with our student's first educators - their parents, ensuring that the work the district has done the last three years in terms of finances - balanced budgets and cost elimination (with our taxpayers as stakeholders) continues moving forward, and how important it is that we plan for our future via a strategic roadmap.
In this first post, I want to focus on my foundational belief in education.
In general, my approach to education is simple. The reality is that our teachers have very limited time with our students to teach when you think about it. We need to focus on the most important fundamentals that help build a child's education: reading, writing, and math.
I said this in a previous video that I have done: Those three subjects are the foundation of a student having the ability to ingest information, use logic to form their own thoughts, and then be able to communicate that out. The result is a student's ability to critically think for themselves.
One of the things that makes me proud as a parent of 3 is when one of my kids has a discussion with me and I can see that they've "done their homework" and have shared something with me that they clearly have thought about, maybe researched, and can effectively tell me about it. I don't want to hear what they think they want me to hear (though sometimes that would make my job as a parent easier). I want to hear what they have to say.
Back to reading and math...
I'm going to put our reading and math proficiency charts below that start in the 2015/2016 school year. Reading is on the left and math is on the right. As you can see, we have been on a downward trend in reading and somewhat stagnant in math, reaching our low point in the 2020/2021 school year. In the past couple of years, we've been able to seemingly reverse the overall trend - time will ultimately tell - but we are above our 2018/2019 proficiency with regard to reading and nearly back to the same level as 2018/2019 with regard to math.
Please know, there is still a lot of work to do to increase our scores and get our students where they need to be.
My commitment when it comes to the Germantown School District is to focus on those three subjects: reading, writing, and math. Serving on the Teaching & Learning Committee has allowed me the ability to go fully hands-on with everything that is being presented to us. I will continue to dedicate the time needed to review all those materials, ask the important questions to gain clarity, and continue to work with my fellow committee members, Board members, administrators, and of course our teachers to implement what our team finds as the best curriculum to implement.
I commit to making sure that we openly and honestly review progress made and identify any necessary improvements that we need to make.
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