My Priorities

Kids need more “runways” when they graduate from Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). The only one we’ve continually invested in is for graduates who want to pursue a 4-year college education. We need more funding to build new paths for our graduates and promote those paths as vigorously as we do college and university enrollment. Young people should be equally encouraged to discover their creativity and passions in areas that may not always lie within our traditional academic pursuits.

Dept of Education Secretary Cardona has it absolutely right with his A-B-Cs for teachers and staff. We must provide them with the professional (A)utonomy they’ve been trained for, grant them (B)etter working environments where they’ll be able to create the conditions for students to thrive, and (C)ompensate them for the professionals they are, allowing them to focus their passion and creativity on building bonds with their students rather than focusing on “test their way to success.” That is not how to build our future.

Kids need to have healthy minds, bodies, and spirits to thrive in our educational system. As teachers build the relationships with their students, they begin to recognize the signs when our students need help and we must empower them to build those relationships and we must staff our schools with the resources and put programs in place so that students know when, how and who to ask for help. Healthy students make the best learners and will graduate from FCPS and build us all a better future!