I hope I don't scare anyone off with the answer to my very first question, but to me, the top two problems in ACPS and Alexandria are problems that I'm pretty sure that the School Board cannot solve or achieve alone. Those problems are 1) Fear and 2) family indifference to failure. I truly believe that Alexandria, as a whole, is afraid to address, head-on, the primary issues that continue to lead to underachievement. We hide behind
code language ( achievement gap, free & reduced lunch, ELL, SPED, etc.) because by using code, we don't really have to see these children as CHILDREN! When we say that 30% are not meeting minimum marks, this translates into nearly 4000 students! When we note that 15% of our Latino students drop out, this amounts to more than 200 living, breathing, needy young adults moving into the economy each and every year with severely inadequate skills to be self-sustaining. Secondly, it is difficult to fathom families being indifferent to educational failures. How many students who fail classes have parents or guardians who refuse to attend Parent/Teacher Conferences or oftentimes do not even know their child's teachers name? Conquering the fear to talk frankly about which students are failing and why and then working incessantly to engage indifferent or historically under-involved families will be two of my highest priorities. I have worked for 26 years for the Department of Defense. I have had direct responsibilities for managing multi-million dollar programs and have had a significant role on a $1.4 billion dollar effort. I have lived and traveled throughout the U.S. and abroad. I have been involved with school districts in West Virginia, Virginia, Alabama and Washington State. I have 3 Children: Janay (GW, Minnie Howard, TCW); Cameron (Jefferson-Houston, GW); Jaquan (Jefferson-Houston, GW). I serve or have served on the: JHAA PTA, GW PTA, TCW PTA, Alexandria PTA Council Vice President, ACPS Strategic Plan Development Team, TC Williams Transformation Team, ACPS Minority Students Achievement Committee, ACPS School Board Budget Advisory Team, Alexandria City's Early Childhood Commission, Alexandria City's Children, Youth and Family Taskforce, NAACP Education Committee Chair, Parent Leadership Training Institute (PLTI) & Alexandria City's Government Academy graduate. No candidate is more qualified.
2. What are your two top critiques of the system and how do you intend to address them?
Again, we must conquer our fear of speaking frankly about who is failing in ACPS and why. When we begin to dive into the data, we learn that of the 30% of ACPS students who are not meeting minimum marks, nearly all of them are children of color. We can't be afraid to acknowledge this. Is it racism? Most have their doubts. Institutionalized bias? Probably some. Social and emotional readiness? I think that is a huge part. Family support structure? Again, likely a huge contributor. So we need to quit using code language, lose our fear and dive in. And we'll need to significantly improve our connections to families and communities. We need to increase trust and provide as much assistance to these families as we possibly can, from birth through graduation. I’m convinced that establishing real and meaningful relationships with students and families is the primary key to making sustained achievement gains. First, we must especially and dramatically improve connections to the minority, ELL and special needs communities. These communities have an incredible amount of distrust with ACPS as well as a discomfort and therefore reluctance with interacting. I will personally commit to establishing a relationship with each and every family who struggles to navigate ACPS. I will work to ensure that every student is aware of all support services available to them. Finally, I will work with established community organizations to ensure that information is timely, repetitively and adequately conveyed. Partner organizations will include Fraternities and Sororities, Tenant and Workers United, Churches, Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority (ARHA), NAACP, Civic Associations and Recreation Centers. I served on Alexandria's Early Childhood Commission and I'm absolutely positive that maximizing one's educational potential begins with positive exposures in the early years, 0-8 years. We need to better align ourselves with Alexandria’s Department of Community and Human Services to work with young mothers and families to ensure that they avail themselves of all early childhood assets available in the city. I also would work diligently to ensure that all of our students’ have meaningful “Individual Achievement Plans, (IAPs). Finally, no IEP or IAP will go unsupported. In addition to my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, I have a master’s certificate from Georgetown University in Paralegal Studies (concentration in Government Law and Intellectual Property) and I am enrolled in courses working toward a doctorate in the area of industrial and organizational psychology (with a social science focus). I escaped the cycle of poverty that is often resigned to low-income children of color, born to unwed, undereducated and unprepared mothers. I understand racism, institutionalized bias, the value of having positive role models and mentors, dodging peer pressure, etc., not because I read books, or imagine or empathize how it must have been, but because I have experienced and been rewarded by each of these things. I will bring these life perspectives and workplace expertise to the school board dais. Alexandria's Parent Leadership program puts emphasis on producing "change agents". No PAC should support me if they are afraid of change, because that is what I will consistently seek.
3. Parents want to understand how Alexandria measures the success of its schools. They also want to know if they are sending their child to a good school. What measures of achievement are now being used? Are they adequate or are additional metrics needed?
Educational success begins with a socially and emotionally well adjusted, inquisitive and enthusiastic child. Countless studies show that this preparation begins “in utero” via a healthy and attentive “family to be”. After a child is born, having the proper nutrition, medical services and life exposures become critical. Even seemingly mundane events like playground “play groups” can help toddlers begin to work on skills of interaction and conflict resolution. It then becomes extremely valuable to provide a child with quality daycare up through Pre-K. With this socially and emotionally healthy, school-aged child, the critical elements for a parent with regards to school selection are basically is the school safe, with experienced leadership; will my child have a fantastic teacher; and is my child excited to attend? If these elements are present, any “rating” of the school becomes almost meaningless to the individual family. Dr. Ben Carson, the world’s foremost pediatric neurosurgeon went to one of the “worst” elementary schools in Baltimore City. As a parent, publications like the “Wall Street Journal” or for-profit national blogs cant’ tell you anything more meaningful about your local school than you can find out by visiting and spending some time there. My daughter and many others are proud graduates of TC Williams High School and she’ll tell you that her pride is not diminished at all with some nebulous designation such as “Persistently Low Achieving (PLA), nor does she know or care how it ranked on the Washington Post’s “High School Index (I think it earned a 791 in 2010, whatever that means!) Ask her and she’ll say, “who cares?” Of course the folks that care are federal agencies, state and local educational boards, school leaders, teachers and some parents. Some of the designations and measures are necessary to assess and to help guide future focus and planning. Federal “Annual Yearly Progress (AYP)” guides and states “Standards of Learning (SOL) metrics are necessary to help target resources and also to begin to do a better job of holding educational leaders and teachers more accountable. The country, as a whole, is still struggling to find the right metrics for school achievement and progress. At the Federal level, no specific guidance or direction has been identified as “ideal”. In the “Race To The Top” program, funds are provided to states that present innovative changes toward improving achievement. The President has championed programs such as the “Harlem Children Zone” which is an all-encompassing attempt to provide family and educational supports from conception through college. Though it has been well funded over the years by several billionaires, the HCZ still struggles with measuring success and certainly still have children who do not maximize their educational potential. DC’s former Superintendent Michelle Rhee made attempts to change student outcomes in DC by establishing school achievement metrics and dramatically increasing teacher salaries and tying them to achievement goals. Rhee and DC’s Mayor lasted one term! Accountability must be done via establishing meaningful and measurable goals. No one quite has it just right yet, and indeed, there may be no such thing! I do think that tying some amount of teacher performance to classroom performance is the right direction. However, especially for districts with a high percentage of low-income, ELL and special education children, we will have to continue to work on how we measure those “subjective” things that teachers do for these students which can often be just as valuable as a child scoring high on a test.
4. One of the school board’s major responsibilities is overseeing and managing the superintendent. What do you believe is the right relationship between the school board and the superintendent?
There is an axiom that “the school board has only one employee, the superintendent.” I would say that this seems to me to be a bit narrow focused and perhaps even a passing of the buck. As an elected official, I would feel that the school board is entrusted by the community to be responsible for all aspects and operations of the school district to include all employees from the superintendent to a contractor hired for one day to remove brush. Therefore, to the extent that we do not violate any employee personnel rights, if I’m elected to the board, I will fight to ensure that every aspect of our business is an open and easily accessible product. Our parents, teachers, and community members should not have to threaten legal actions or go through burdensome “Freedom of Information Act” requests simply to see what we are doing. Working to establish real and meaningful relationships with our families and the community will be a focus of my board tenure. This, I feel, is the key to achieving sustained positive educational outcomes. To do this, we must establish trust and transparency. Transparency of our operations will also foster more trust with City Council. This will be critical as we work together developing both short and long-term capacity plans. Having served on a number of City and ACPS boards and committees, I have worked closely with the Mayor and every council member and I am prepared to hit the ground running. In addition to providing council a budget, as a board, we'll not only manage the superintendent but also assist with contract management oversight and the settlement of personnel disputes. I have served as a contracting officer representative and contracting officer technical lead on multi-million dollar engineering, production and facility construction contracts. I have served as a manager of personnel including guiding a team of forty-seven employees while serving as the Director of the Army Stryker Transformation Team. I have assisted with hiring personnel and have been intimately involved with personnel issues. I tell folks that over the past seven years, I have been to more school board meetings than some school board members! About the only thing that I've yet to do is attend one of the "close sessions" to handle a personnel issue. I am qualified and prepared to handle these and all other tasks.
5. Superintendent Sherman stated that, “Our community and students deserve candor and a complete picture when it comes to looking at school and division performance.” On a scale of A to F, how would you grade the school administration on communication, transparency, and candor? If you give a grade less than A, what changes to improve the situation would you recommend?
| I grade ACPS administration "C" on communications, "D" on transparency and "F" on candor. The "C" in communications is primarily due to the fact that ACPS has wonderful employees working in this area. They do a good job of maintaining and updating the website, providing robo-calls and attempting to advertise upcoming events. Transparency and candor are products that take on the attitude of the leader and in this case, I believe that Dr. Sherman has been woefully secretive about various plans for the district as well as being coy and often condescending with his dialogue. For example, I believe that Dr. Sherman had plans to implement IB in ACPS from his first day on the job. I likewise believe that he has a strong desire to implement the "Success For All" reading program across the district. Major communication failures include the Public/Private partnership exploration for Jefferson-Houston, the failed attempt at extending the school year, the dissolution of the Adult Education Program, the roll-out of the extended day at Jefferson-Houston |
6. Because of big enrollment increases in recent years, Alexandria’s elementary schools are bursting at the seams. But these enrollment increases appear to be limiting elementary school choice. How would you address the capacity challenges facing the schools and their effects on parental choice?
Lets discuss parental choice first. Very few decisions are as important as where to place a child in school. I support providing as much choice to parents as is possible. I have no problem with a family that has the resources and decides that a private or parochial school would be a better choice for their child. I am a product of public schools and the job of the school board is to set the course for the district's public schools to meet the needs of all of its students. For most, I suspect that the ideal choice would be to have a high achieving, highly respected neighborhood public elementary school that your child could attend. For some neighborhoods in Alexandria, this condition exists. At the same time, Alexandria is only 16 square miles and one can traverse the city in less than 15 minutes, so busing students, especially middle and high school, is generally not seen as a dramatic occurrence. We cannot control increases in enrollment. These are the consequences of living in such a fabulous city. New townhouses and condominium complexes abound. Additionally, with the low interest rates, more families are able to expand their homes and make them more accommodating, thus remaining in the City. What the new board will have to do is establish both a short-term and a long-range capacity plan. These will have to be established in concert with council, planning and zoning, demographers, developers and community members. Where current space allows, modular units can provide short-term accommodations. Additionally, as new homes as well as new schools come on line, we will certainly need to explore boundary adjustments (redistricting). I also support thinking creatively such as re-looking possible school "linking". For example, the opening of a new school on the Jefferson-Houston property could potentially help alleviate some of the capacity issues at other schools to include Lyles-Crouch, MacArthur and Maury.
7. Superintendent Sherman said in October 2011that “eliminating academic achievement differences among race, income, disability and language subgroups must be the highest priority.” This, he said, is “an educational and moral imperative.” Schools across America are struggling to close this achievement gap. Do you believe that Alexandria has been making progress in closing its achievement gaps? If so, what are the best examples? Where and in what areas do we need to do more?
| Alexandria’s “per household” average income places it among the top ten cities in the country. Likewise, we are near the top in terms of our number of households with at least one member holding a bachelor, masters’ or doctoral degree. The average 2012 per student expenditure for the state of Virginia is approximately $10,600 dollars while ACPS spends over $18,000 dollars per student. Even with these high expenditures, high incomes and highly educated households, ACPS lags behind state averages in nearly every subgroup, the exception being for our white students, where we consistently exceed the state average. With only a cursory inspection of the data, one can see that ACPS’s student demographics do not mirror those of Alexandria City. ACPS is a “majority minority” school district with more than 65% of the students African-American, Hispanic or Asian. Conversely nearly 61% of Alexandria’s residents are Caucasian. Additionally, ACPS’s “free and reduced lunch” percentage is near 60%. NCLB has forced states and districts to collect this type of information. With this, ACPS should be able to hone in as to exactly who is failing? Where do these families live? What barriers exist that contribute to the high number of educational failures? What services can ACPS provide? What services can Alexandria City provide? These are the types of specific questions we need to answer to truly begin to implement programs and changes that will have a sustained positive effect on the educational outcomes of for these children. |
8. One of the board’s major responsibilities is budgeting. How do you restrain costs and still provide what students need?
| In addition to this being a vague question, the issue is indeed a tough one to grapple with. Vagueness is present here in that there is no stated definition for “restrain”. Additionally, we’ve not identified what constitutes the “students needs”. Money surely does not guarantee successful student outcomes. In 2010, DC led all “states” in expenditures per child ($18,600) yet they are regularly assessed as being amongst the lowest achieving. In totality, the ACPS budget approaches $250 million dollars. Our per student expenditure far exceeds the state average and yet we do not meet average state achievement levels. This fact makes it extremely difficult to justify seeking additional dollars from council, yet we know that every year, expenses rise so that simply to stay “status quo” would require more funds. Of course the alternative is to modify some of our programs and approaches. We need to better target our resources. For too long now, we’ve had board members with the mentality that “a rising tide raises all boats”. With this, we’ve focused on raising rigor, increasing attendance in AP and Honors courses, instituting a new curriculum, and implementing IB. I submit that many of the “boats” used by low-income children of color have “holes” in them thus this “rising tide” simply causes their efforts to sink more swiftly. We’ve got to personalize our efforts. We need to look at each individual “boat”. Some will have small holes, some larger ones, but the holes must be patched before the boat can rise with the tide. Targeted interventions imply that resources are apportioned based on need and this presents a very politically challenging dilemma. Some parents may begin to feel that focus, attention and resources are being taken away from other children, which might have a negative effect on their educational outcomes. Herein lies the dichotomy that is public education in Alexandria, VA! The ACPS award-winning strategic plan lists as its “vision” to “set the international standard in educational excellence…” I don’t believe we can ever be recognized as such until we better serve those who are not meeting minimum marks. To do this will amount to a paradigm shift in the thinking, will and actions of many folks and this will not be a simple sell (see Michelle Rhee!) |
9. Despite increasing enrollment, there is a perception that some parents continue to question the quality of Alexandria’s public schools and send their children to private school or to a public school elsewhere. Is this perception accurate, and if so, what can and should the school system do, if anything, to convince these families to stay in Alexandria schools?
| Alexandria has around 16% of their households with school-aged children attending private or parochial school. This is on par with the national average, and given that Alexandria has such a high per capita income, some might expect our percentage of private or parochial attendance to be much higher. Alexandria has some fine elementary schools and more than 70% of our students do well in our middle middle schools as well as TC Williams. Data shows that parent education and income levels are the leading indicators of educational outcomes. We, as a community, need to emphasize the criticality of having a socially and emotionally well-adjusted child. Our community needs to increase the availability of quality early-childhood services. It is unreasonable to ask teachers alone to provide the intellectual, social and character-building stimulus and support that our children need. School Board members need to emphasize the importance that the entire community plays in the education of the child. We must establish a continuum of health, educational and social supports. With socially and emotionally well-adjusted children, the impact of class size is less. Also the need for altered programming such as an extended day diminishes. My budget priorities would reflect a focus on early interventions and parental support services. I also would focus funding on securing additional high quality teachers and counselors. I also would advocate for the implementation of a restorative justice discipline program (RJDP). Research indicates that RJDPs can lead to reductions in dropouts and improvements in achievement primarily by working to eliminate the root causes of discipline issues, rather than simply suspending or expelling students. Finally, I would be a strong advocate for securing more highly qualified paraprofessionals especially to support our special needs students. ACPS’s achievement results for our special needs students are well below surrounding jurisdictions and state averages. Often this is a product of us simply “making due” with inadequately trained and insufficiently staffed support teams. |
10. There is pressure on school systems to develop rigorous teacher evaluation systems. Virginia requires that 40% of a teacher’s evaluation be based on student outcomes. Because the state allows districts some flexibility in determining those outcomes, what makes sense for Alexandria?
I support tying administrative leader and teacher evaluations to student outcomes. No one yet knows what amount makes sense. Right now, Virginia says 40% but allows for deviations. Next year, the mandate may be 50% or30%. It is absolutely imperative that any evaluation systems must be developed with the leaders and teachers wholly involved in the development process. A I mentioned elsewhere, we must also work to identify acceptable metrics for“subjective” items of value. For example, a teacher may bond with an unruly child, and while that child’s test scores for the year may not reflect immediate success, that child may be better positioned, emotionally and socially, to perform well in succeeding years.
11. There is pressure on school systems to develop rigorous teacher evaluation systems. Virginia requires that 40% of a teacher’s evaluation be based on student outcomes. Because the state allows districts some flexibility in determining those outcomes, what makes sense for Alexandria?
| I support tying administrative leader and teacher evaluations to student outcomes. No one yet knows what amount makes sense. Right now, Virginia says 40% but allows for deviations. Next year, the mandate may be 50% or30%. It is absolutely imperative that any evaluation systems must be developed with the leaders and teachers wholly involved in the development process. A I mentioned elsewhere, we must also work to identify acceptable metrics for“subjective” items of value. For example, a teacher may bond with an unruly child, and while that child’s test scores for the year may not reflect immediate success, that child may be better positioned, emotionally and socially, to perform well in succeeding years.See additional email. |
12. Despite the increase in enrollment, there are families of young children who still have doubts about ACPS and plan on sending their children to private schools or move out of the city. How can ACPS improve its communication to families of younger children?
We need more highly qualified Special needs teachers and paraprofessionals to support all of our IEPs. Too many of our special needs instructors are handling unmanageable caseloads. Additional specialists can take on students and also help coach and work with our regular teachers in full inclusion classes. Historically, the educational outcomes for our special needs students have been far below state averages. ACPS has not placed the necessary emphasis or resources on this group of students. Finally, as has been the case with ACPS across the board, we need to establish more meaningful and trustful relationships with our special needs families. Parents of special needs children invest more time than any, especially with regards to the development of the “Individual Education Plan (IEP). The IEP then becomes a legally binding document wherein ACPS agrees to provide the resources necessary to meet the standards identified in the IEP. We cannot continue to randomly ignore aspects of the IEP, bully frustrated parents and then hope that they simply go away. As a board member, I will not tolerate excuses for not adhering to anIEP. If there must be deviation, itwill not be done without adequate notification and full agreement of the student’s parents or guardians.
13. What is the one decision made by the board in the last six years that you disagreed with and how would you have voted differently?
| I would not have extended the superintendent's contract for the rate nor time period that was agreed to. |
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