001The thing that I hope the public understands about the school board is that we are here to represent them. Our schools are for everybody. They're not just for the children that are attending. Our public schools, we're huge employers. We are affecting the skills that people are going to have graduating out in our community. As a district, we have the opportunity to serve these kids in a way that will benefit them their whole lives. Our community created The Bellingham Promise that says, here's what we want for our students, and here's how we want our district to look. And the school board is really in charge of seeing, hey, are we actually moving in that direction? A misconception about our board is that we're sitting around talking about curriculum and lunch menus and schedules and all of
002these things that really are just how you achieve the ends. And so we kind of look at the 10,000-foot level rather than what's happening in classrooms, and it makes sure kind of the ship is going in the direction that the community said we wanted it to go. It's called policy governance. And, basically, what that means is that the board is focused much more on outcomes. Provide the context in which, the professional staff, the people who know what they're doing, as educators, as, you know, lifelong school administrators, can go execute on the direction that serves the community that we're here to do. Helping make sure that the right people are in the right places, we do that by making sure the superintendent is the right person in the right spot. We use the Promise to evaluate
003the superintendent. Take those ideals that have really come from the community. We decide how to make those into objectives that can be measured. And that's what we hold the superintendent accountable for, are those outcomes. We do site visits where we get to see what's going on in all of our different schools. Yesterday, we were at Squalicum High School, and we spent the whole hour talking to a group of student leaders. One of my big takeaways was that our equity, diversity, and inclusion work really matters. We heard over and over from students that having their identities affirmed and having their identities reflected back to them by staff really helps them to be leaders. We have community linkages where we meet with certain groups in our community. We've wanted the business community to come talk to us.
004We've wanted the faith community to come talk to us. The LGBT community, special ed parents, and it's a time for us to listen. We also do student roundtables where we actually get to hear directly from students about their school experiences, what's going well, what they would like more of. And those are really invaluable because, ultimately, those are the people that we're here to serve. The school district does such incredible work, and II see how that's manifest in the community. I see how it's happened in my kids' lives, and I wanted to be part of the support network that helped, help make sure that we could continue to do it to the best of our ability. It's really powerful to hear about this kind of policy work that we look at on a school board level,
005how it filters out to students, and how it actually really makes a difference in their lives. We do a lot of quiet work, but it's actually really important. It's a four-year term, and, no, we are not paid. One of the only I think it's the only elected position in the state that's not paid. You have to have the means. You have to have the time. You have to be able to afford it. And, you know, a single mom, it's a challenge, but we make it work. Everybody else that's on the ballot gets a salary, but we don't. We do it because we care. There's nothing better that we can do for our kids after putting a roof over their head and food on the table than a great education. And I think that's what will
006solve a myriad of social problems, world problems, is education.