001[Music] good evening my name is Sally Allen and I am a member of the League of Women Voters of the annaroo area I welcome you to tonight's forum featuring candidates for the anaerobic schools Board of Education the cats will be on the ballot in the general election on Tuesday November 6th we are broadcasting from the studio's of CTN in Ann Arbor the League of Women Voters is pleased to sponsor these forums the league is a nonpartisan civic organization that encourages informed and active participation of all citizens in government the Lea works to increase understanding of major public policy issues and seeks to strengthen and broaden knowledge about our form of government and democracy while the league does not support candidates or parties we do take stands on issues we have studied one of the leaks
002most important goals is to assist voters in making informed choices at the polls and thus we bring you tonight's program our moderator this evening is Carolyn Madden who will explain the format and get us started Carolyn okay so there were four open seats for the Ann Arbor School Board and we began the night with the first forum with before incumbent in our public school board members and now we will have a second forum with four four candidates I would think of the names one candidate cannot be here tonight so let me just introduce our candidates from left to right is Rebecca Lazarus Lazarus yeah Suzanne Perkins and Brian Johnson and Lucas Cole is our candidate who was not able to be here tonight okay so each candidate will have an opening statement of up to
003one minute each candidate will have a closing statement of up to 90 seconds and in between I will be asking questions which came from the Ann Arbor community at appropriate times the timers will hold up their paddles with the amount of time remaining yes and 90 and for each of the questions as well so the timer's will hold up their paddles the amount of time remaining the thirty-second paddle will be up and then finally a stop sign and please stop when indicated so that we all have an equal opportunity to hear all of you the order of speaking was determined by a drawing before we began and League members who will help us with the timing are Randy Friedman to my immediate left and then Miriam Shaw thank you very much and now we're ready
004for our opening statements miss Lazarus would you please begin your opening statement one minute hello my name is Rebecca Lazarus and I want to say thank you to the League of Women Voters and CTN for hosting this great forum tonight I'm so excited to be running for Ann Arbor School Board I'm a mother of two children who attend Ann Arbor schools I'm a business consultant with a degree from the University of Michigan and I have a diverse business background that has for the past several years I've been managing multi-million dollar real estate development projects I believe that there's an opportunity and a need for our district to have better transparency so our board can be more responsive and more progressive in how we support our students teachers and principals we can do better I look
005forward to your comment your questions thank you very much miss Perkins thank you thank you my name is dr. Suzanne Perkins I also want to thank the league and CTN I am a education neuroscientist I have a PhD in educational psychology and I'm running for school board because I felt that I brought a unique perspective of having a background in educational policy in educational science I am a graduate of the anti-v public schools I left after graduating from Pioneer High School and I went to Massachusetts where I did my doctor where I did my master's work then taught in special ed with some of the most vulnerable kids came back here for my PhD and both my kids are Ann Arbor public school graduates oh good evening I'm Bryan Johnson I want to thank the
006League of Women Voters and CTN as well I wanted to just let you know that I'm proudest of the fact that I'm the father of two kids one at Patton Gill and one at Tappan and the husband of a teacher a schoolteacher I have a master's in business administration from the University of Michigan I'm also a pioneer high school graduate in a Forsyth middle school and Abbott elementary school graduate as well I currently work at the Business School where I do admissions for the masters and business program specifically focused on recruiting underrepresented minorities I was one of the first to graduate from my from my neighborhood pine lake on the west side here in Ann Arbor I wasn't the last but what I do know is after about 30 years we're still having a lot
007of the same issues the same types of kids that grew up around me are still struggling to to get some of the education outcomes that I was able to achieve and that's why I want to be on the school board I think I bring a unique perspective to that and I'm excited to talk a little bit more about it okay now we'll begin our first question I'll begin with you miss Lasser so your the challenges and you are facing four incumbent board members for a seat on the board what issue or issues prompted you to seek this office at this time and how would you accomplish your goals I ran two years ago and one of the things that I ran on back then was I felt that outsourcing had degraded the quality of our
008classrooms and busing services our food services and the maintenance of our buildings and grounds these contracts are coming up for reconsideration and I don't really feel that these services have been improved much as leaders in our educational system we need to provide the very best quality services that possibly can be provided to our students and teachers if we can't do that then we need to have the board reconsider possibly different ways of bringing those services back in-house the security my children get on the bus we don't know who the bus driver is there's no familiarity of who these people are and the custodial services some of our schools aren't well maintained these need to be addressed miss Perkins okay thank you I'm running for school board primarily because I'm interested in making sure that the
009school board has policies that are research-based the school board is in charge of making policy decisions for the anti verticals and directing the superintendent to follow through with policy decisions I want those to be research-based particularly in terms of closing the achievement gap which has been an ongoing problem in Ann Arbor for as long as I can remember we need to pull data from the schools and the various programs that we have intended to close the achievement gap and see whether they're working if they're not working we need to make changes to those programs to make sure they're those to make sure that we are actually closing the achievement gap I have been an advocate for later school start time for adolescents the CDC recommends that no school should start before 8:30 it's been about
010six years since they made that recommendation and we have we are not fully following it I think it's a very important policy that we need to follow because it helps with mental health it helps with achievement and it helps with physical health we're one of only four states in the country that treats 17 year olds as adults in the judicial system and we really need to look at our policies in terms of the school to Prison Pipeline the inequality in the way that we bring kids into the school to Prison Pipeline and thank you mr. Johnson Thanks so I've been a resident of the Ann Arbor area for a long time I've been back for about 12 years and what that's allowed me to do is to talk to a lot of people who are
011citizens of Ann Arbor and who have their children in schools or who work in the schools and what over time as I was working with different parent groups to either save the the tuition based preschool or when I served as the president of the district-wide black parent support group I noticed the way that the district was working with its parents and with the with the teachers and even principals and there's there's a lot of concern I think on the surface our school district looks like it's doing a great job but if you really start to ask the people that are on the ground they actually see these things happening there's a growing concern and a lack of trust in the board a few reasons for that is for instance the teachers feel like they're being
012silenced like they can't speak up like they can't be a part of the solution as we talk about these big issues we need everybody working towards those things and when you have a school board that hires a union-busting law firm it's very difficult for your teachers to feel like they're vested in the in your child's education or that they're not seen as the as the bad person and we understand the impact that that has that teacher performance has on our students so that's one thing other thing is you know I've seen my mother was in the district-wide black parent support group as well and we've seen this achievement these achievement issues happen based on ethnicity and income for too long and I'd like to come in and really look at some new innovative ways to
013change that thank you okay our next question and begin with you miss Perkins decades ago Michigan consistently ranked among the top five states in funding for schools alongside Maryland and Massachusetts most recently Michigan is ranked 34th in education funding nationally so as a trustee what newer next steps can Ann Arbor Public Schools implement to effectively advocate for additional state funding for for K through 12 education well I'm hopeful that we will get some changes in Lansing that will make a big difference we have seen cuts of I think it's like 1.2 billion dollars because we've had the we've had funding from the K through 12 the school Aid Fund we've had higher ed funding funding taken out of that and so it's been reduced it's also you know various ways in which there's been sort
014of a death by a million cuts of trying to remove tax money from the school Aid Fund so it's a really big issue and something that has to be solved at Lansing by and large it's very difficult for us in Ann Arbor to get more funding in terms of the budget here I would really like to try to make sure that we put our emphasis on personnel instead of on things like utilities and bussing I would like to work with the city to try to get a bus line that goes from skyline straight down Stadium all the way out to Ypsilanti and back so more kids can take the public bus to the high schools so that we have less buses and work on initiatives to green the schools which would help with the the
015cost of the cost of heating and electricity for the building I think there's also an argument to be made for moving administration into the buildings so what I would do is I think we we all understand that there are funding issues in Lansing and a lot of that needs to be changed by lobbying Congress in Lansing to return some of the funds that have been diverted from K through 12 back into K through 12 and and I think one way to do that is really to energize our public our politics is local I think one thing that the board needs to do is be more visible to be more into our communities and one thing that we're doing as we as we canvas is talking about voting in general and really getting more people involved
016in the process if we can do that and get and get more kind of boots on the ground with that I think that we can impact things in Lansing I also think that we need to make more partnerships with other school districts that are that are at neighboring I think if you talk to someone on the if C school board for example I think sometimes there there is a bit of a of a push and pull between the districts and I think we really need to work with them to lobby together and look at our area and how we can we can help to to begin to to lobby Congress as I said to fun or to return some of that money back yes I have to concur with my colleague over here mr. Johnson
017the problem does lie because the funding comes from Lansing that hopefully in this next election people will get out and vote for to change Lansing out some of the policies that they that some of the governors want to implement will definitely help all the school districts in the area with early education so that we can catch these children early on when they're fresh they're ready to learn and get quality preschools for all students in this area not only ours but everywhere in Michigan I think that as a district we're a large district where I think the fifth largest district in the state of Michigan we need to be out there public standing up being strong getting other districts locally and working together trying to partner with them so that we can stand up to Lansing
018show that we're tired of all of this top-down push on our districts we need to take our district back and I think that working with our teachers making our vision our long-term vision as to how we're doing this how we're trying to fight for them so they have more latitude in the classroom I think will encourage the parents and the students to stand behind the board and the district and the administration to get these things to put the pressure on Lansing ok thank you very much and the next question will begin with you mr. Johnson Ann Arbor is a town characterized by both privilege and need with one in four students coming from poverty one in ten coming from a home where English is not the first language spoken and one in ten with needs
019documented on an individual education plan in what specific ways will you lead as a trustee to ensure that all students are learning to their highest potential and so that we continue to reduce disparities in achievement outcomes traditionally underserved groups of students this is a great question and one that's really close to my heart I really what I understand about education is that when you look at educational disparities between students that have resources and those that don't there's a large percentage of what a large percentage of that disparity is because of things outside of the classroom if when you tend to look at even the highest performing students they're they're not necessarily performing higher because of what they're doing in the classroom they're spending extra time outside they have extra resources be it tutoring or SAT
020prep or enrichment programs and one thing that I love about Ann Arbor is we have that already in our community I've worked with a program called Kappa League where we took you know young black men and we did mentoring as a lower-income black person growing up here I never saw doctors and lawyers but they are here and so I do think that the way that the district can actually help is to start thinking about education a little bit more holistically thinking about how things happen outside the classroom and outside of the school so having someone that partners with these community organizations that bring them in we talk about wraparound services but you know where is the proactive action being taken to reach out to these wraparound services how our teachers being equipped to understand when
021students need these types of services in the connect them to them and I think one way we can do that is to hire people full time that that identify these resources that we have in this wonderful city of ours and start to connect those students to those resources so that they're better off overall that was a long question okay well yeah okay happy to read it again in our bure is a town characterized by both privilege and need and with one in four students coming from poverty one in ten coming from a home where English is not the first language spoken and one in ten with needs documented on an individual education plan so in what specific ways will you lead as a trustee to ensure that all students are learning to the highest potential
022so that we continue to reduce disparities and achievement outcomes across traditionally underserved groups of students I think first and foremost I feel that we as the board would need to reach out to the community and listen to what the community is asking for I feel like I've met with many families and they just don't feel like they have anyone to talk to they don't know where to turn it's very frustrating and some of these ideas we've got a rich community are our second largest student population are Asian Americans we should reach out to the this community and I would like to be one of those people who step out and actually reach out to them they have they come from many different countries that have very advanced educational systems that have working solutions that we
023could bring in to our schools and actually start implementing some of them on a pilot program basis several wives several and even husbands are on h4 visas they can't work but they are willing to help and volunteer in the schools and I'd like to reach out to them to have after-school tutoring programs that we could implement in the various elementary schools and even a Milla and high school so I think we have resources it's just we need to be able to know where they are reach out to the community and be innovative in how we use those resources thank you well this is the issue that I ran on that's the one that is closest to my heart I when I was a teacher in Massachusetts I as I said earlier I was a special
024ed teacher and I taught kids with emotional and behavioral disorders they came they were the most vulnerable kids they came from very high poverty backgrounds most of them had been abused and neglected and most my work as an academic follows working with very vulnerable kids the things that you need to do in order to close the achievement gap are you need to identify kids really early see where they are behind in terms of you know all social functioning reading math functioning all of those things you do need wraparound services you need services where people can go into the home and for a wealthy district as you said we are on a wealthy community we don't really have those kinds of services to any great extent the starting school later is actually but Joan to be
025really important for most vulnerable kids because it's so important for academic achievement and for mental health and we need to really pay attention to whether or not we are diverting kids into disciplinary practices who are on IEP s or who are low-income because that starts out a tracking very early on okay thank you very much okay the next question we'll begin with miss Lazarus in the Ann Arbor Public Schools our 34 physical properties which represent a significant community investment average 65 years of age and like many public organizations in Michigan consistent renewal of instance infrastructure excuse me was deferred during a decade of reductions in state funding can you describe the steps already in progress to catch up and keep up with physical property needs in the district as a trustee what steps would you
026explore adding to this body of work to ensure updated high functioning and fishing and efficient school buildings this is a long one to serve our students today and into the future one of the things we just recently passed a bond or not a bond a millage increase to address those shortcomings in our budget so we do have some funds to work with however as a board member I would like to understand and I even actually worked on that millage campaign to get the word out to the community to vote for it I'm not one who likes to raise my taxes but I see the need for our buildings and the infrastructure these are our assets that the best assets that our district has our teachers are our best asset but these are buildings that I
027know people have loved and they have wonderful fond memories of these buildings and how they went through school and but some of them are very old and we have to reevaluate exactly are these buildings and the cost of real remodeling them is it the best use of this these funds maybe there's other options we have a lot of land that we can actually build upon new very green and more efficient buildings and development is something that I have a little bit of background in but we should look at that as a possibility to use these funds so it's it's important to keep these made the maintenance of these buildings up and I think we should look at how we use them a little closer thank you inefficiency in the buildings is one of the biggest
028budget items it really it's just a continuing reaching from the budget and we do have many old buildings in Ann Arbor across the state I've talked to Gretchen Whitner Whitmer about an idea that I have about a one-time plan to green buildings across the state green the school buildings across the state I don't know if anything will come up at I've also talked to various people at our at our state and state legislature here we have in the past used millage money for things like improving the windows and the insulation and buildings we need to continue to do that because as long as our our infrastructure is crumbling we're wasting money all the time and it is something that we could try to invest in things like solar and you know that all the these
029buildings have huge roofs on them and DTE has a certain number of soul who raised that they are supposed to put across the state and having them on top of our buildings would be a good way to reduce eventually the cost of running those buildings thank you yeah so with any issue I think that you need to understand the problem first and I do know that the that the board has is in the process of a facilities assessment so I would really look at what that facilities assessment says first and foremost I would look at fixing the things that that are safety hazards and that need to be fixed right away my daughter the daughters go to school and in our Republic schools and when I went to curriculum night it was so hot I
030can't I can't believe that they go to school there every day so you know some of those things where we're talking about cooling and really improving that environment for them in the short term I think we should definitely look at but I also think that we need to look longer term one thing that we've been doing is we have been passing these villages but they they do tend to be kind of stopgap sits when we need the money we ask for it but I'd like to see a more long-term plan to develop either new construction or it's funny Rebecca mentioned buildings in fond memories we are talking about I told her I've met my wife and see Hall of pioneers so I don't want to destroy Pioneer High School of course but but I do
031think that we do need to look at you know ways to renovate or to or to rebuild or to do new construction so that we we meet a balance we do need to talk to our community to see you know what what they would like to do I was here around the skyline construction and I saw a lot of the the the passionate out cries around that so I think that that needs to be managed but we definitely have crumbling infrastructure and after a while you can't keep putting a bandaid on it you need to look at something more long-term okay thank you very much the next question we begin with you miss Perkins school safety school safety is always uppermost and parents Minds these days so do you support the district's current policies on
032school safety and why or why not it's it's a great question for today a lot of us are wearing black today because because it's a way to say that we believe survivors of sexual assault sexual assault happens the bubble for that is starting around 14 years of age until the early 20s and we need to I think we need to have greater programming around helping teaching kids what is you know where it is okay to touch and not touch bodies and to have safe places for people to report I think that we have done we're really lucky in Ann Arbor because we have a very diverse we have a very diverse group of people and we do generally treat each other with a great deal of kindness we have in the past had a gap
033in how we discipline people where as I said before that the kids who are on IEP is kids who are low-income are more likely to be disciplined and to sent in to the track where they end up in the school to Prison Pipeline so we need to look at more restorative justice practices and we need to really work with kids finding out what places in their schools are safe by finding out from them if there are bathrooms that are unsafe etc I'm great um so I think that or one of the things that our district has been plagued with is suicides in the last couple years we've seen suicide attempts and suicide skyrocket and they've really rocked our our schools and I think that you know that's one that's one kind of symptom of the
034fact that we need to double down on mental health in investment and directing those funds where they need to go one of my biggest concerns is when I see when I see school shootings and you know typically those are the kids who really you know they don't necessarily have IBS they don't necessarily they're kind of under the radar and I think as we're looking at helping specific kids there a lot that get left out and and as we're always kind of focusing on you know shrinking budgets in the bottom line from a fiscal standpoint a lot of these these children who when I was in school we had you know school counselors that were there that weren't just people that that worked on on your class schedule but people that could actually look at your
035mental health and and that's one of those things that I really think that we should double down on I think there was some some an increase in funding for mental health but some of that went to like additional principals and and and Dean's for four specific schools and while that's great you know I think that you know I'd feel more comfortable if we were doing something that more directly work with kids and in their their mental health and you know letting helping teachers to understand how to direct them to those resources safety in the schools it's it's really sad that we live in a time where our children have to come home and tell us that they did an active shooter drill today and my daughter told me that she she she sat in the
036bathtub with pillows over her unfortunately I don't think that that's really gonna save her from something as an active shooter I think we need to push back on our legislation to do something about gun violence and our schools should not allow any guns in our schools or around our schools and our district has been forthright in fighting that so that's a great thing I think that it also comes down to kids need to feel safe in that they know who they're dealing with the adults we tell our children about stranger danger but if they're getting if people who are working in the schools are different every a very other month or every couple of months and they don't get to know these people the bus drivers the custodial services it's very sad that they don't
037know who these people are so they're not sure who these individuals are so they don't have that security feeling that they can go to all these adults and know that they're going to be safe so I think we really need to look at who our children are being exposed to in this the district and in their schools thank you next question again mr. Johnson how do you feel about the state legislating for proposed changes to Michigan's social studies curriculum so I think we're in an interesting time in our country in general where we're even you know facts have become debatable and historical facts have have become have become manipulated in a way to push political agendas and I think that that this the the proposals to change social studies is a symptom or an example
038of that and I think is really dangerous because as we especially start to look at kind of minority communities and we we seek to empower them or have them feel like they belong in in our history and in in our society and that they they can do well in school when you you start to sanitize some of the some of the things that have happened historically I think that works against them I also think that we we need to you know build on our on our rich history and when people start to change that it's it's just not helpful for our students so so I totally oppose it it is hyper partisan I think you know it's it's poisonous in a lot of ways and and and I don't agree with it at all I
039have to agree with my colleague down there it is it's it's terrible that that people are even trying to take people out of very like Helen Keller Hillary Clinton I mean this is this this is just going a bit too far and we have to stand up as a community and say enough Sanat stop and as a district we have to look at where we're purchasing our curriculum items from our textbooks where what states are authorizing these books we should ban any type of publisher that actually is encouraging these types of changes to our social studies curriculum I I just we have to stand up and we have to bond together with not only our district but other districts say because money talks and if you're not selling books and you're not selling textbooks they're
040gonna they're going to stop the education system has been the center of the culture wars for a very long time back when I was getting my masters in education which was embarrassingly a long time ago even then Texas had the biggest they do their textbooks for the entire state so they have the biggest sales of textbooks and they make decisions which is what Rebecca was talking about at the state level now they're talking about removing Hillary Clinton and Helen Keller but they've done it years and years and years they've removed Latinos they've removed african-americans they removed all these people from the curriculum and then it's the biggest buyer of textbooks so then everybody else is forced to use those textbooks it's happening very clearly in our state because obviously these are state ideas for changing
041our social social studies curriculum we that's where we really need to be standing up to Lansing we need to be at these at the legislative sessions we need to be talking to people we need to be there telling people that these are terrible ways to control education trying to take democracy and democratic values out of our social studies curriculum I mean it's just a poor on thank you very much we're just debating we think we have time for one more question and we'll start with you miss Lazarus what are your thoughts on Michigan's third grade reading law first implemented in 2017-18 how might you help improve the current district plan given the fact that Ann Arbor public school receives less state funding funding than other districts I I support reading I mean I think reading
042opens the door to the world for any kid any adult any child having the standard set is fine how we get there is another thing I think we need to encourage after-school tutoring to understand and allow our teachers to have more time to actually teach the children in the classroom and understand who these kids are where they are in their their education and their academic performance and try to not look at them as data through testing pretest post-test quizzes I mean I support testing however and when a teacher feels that it's necessary but our district has gone way beyond the testing requirements that our state requires us to implement I think that we need to catch kids young I've said that before in preschool have quality preschool education and allow our teachers latitude to be
043creative and make reading fun my son struggles with reading and it's it took us a long time to get him to love reading he loves it now but it took us a long time so every kids not there is every kid's different so you have to understand who you're teaching to okay so the grade reading law was I believe originally started by Adam Zemke and then if I'm correct he didn't vote for it in the end it was originally a bipartisan idea to try to make sure that kids are achieving appropriate reading skills by third grade and that is a totally laudable goal we do in fact need to know whether kids are able to read by third grade but it has become but the law itself is extremely punitive holding kids back holding kids
044back really never does anything it doesn't help anybody it does get into the issue of testing and over testing we have a lot of testing that's mandated by the state and much of it is inappropriately done from somebody who has a lot of education policy you know you don't test people in the fall and then not get the church back until April when it's useless for the teacher and the parent and the students that's a lot of that as state mandated but another thing that we can try - we can try to focus on is getting actually the results back early because if you do identify kids early you can do things like Reading Recovery to bring kids up to speed but that's where you want to be helping them and not punitive and the
045third grade reading law is unfortunately punitive sure I actually agree with Rebecca and Suzanne on all points I do believe that you know reading is important it's a it's an important building block on a lot of other skills just developing your cognitive ability of being able to read well is really important but it also starts to lead into academic and social and discipline issues - when a child can't read a lot of a lot of the behavioral issues are really to cover up the fact that the kid can't read and so so I do believe that by third grade there should be specific standards but I but I agree they shouldn't be punitive I have two children and one reads I mean one performs a little bit differently differently than the other it's very difficult
046to say that by this time this kid has to reach a certain standard or we're gonna hold them back holding them back starts to exacerbate the exact problems that I was talking about before now there's a stigma on them now they've now they've they've been held back and they watch their classmates go go farther so um so I I do believe that that it makes sense to you know not follow that standard and so the fact that we're getting less funding is great on that on that note because we're doing the right thing for our kids I think that you know teachers should be empowered to make the types of decisions to help those children get the additional support to catch up because to Rebecca's earlier point some kids it just takes them a little
047bit longer and you don't want to add additional pressure an additional stigma that's going to work against you as opposed to work for you so so I do that were kind of headed in the right direction there okay thank you very much responding to all the questions and now you each have we'll begin with you mr. Johnson gave you the opportunity to have your closing statement also for 90 seconds so thank you so much again for this for this experience one of the first time I've been on a panel like this that's televised live so that's a bucket list item that can go ahead and mark off I just want to you know thank you for this opportunity I do believe that we live in a great district I owe my whole life to the
048teachers and the principals and one teacher that's actually sitting right next to you for helping me throughout my career I do believe though that that at a board level we need to set a vision for our district and if you look at what's been going on the board has done a great job at at approving budgets and keeping their head down and getting things done but you need a vision when you start to look over the last three decades at least we're dealing with a lot of the same issues that we were that we were faced with back then and the reason is that we that were not being innovative and I think that the great thing about our board is that it does change over about half of it changes over at any given
049time and we have the institutional knowledge but I think that we need more vision go on the website for the board and see what the goals are I look myself I couldn't really find very concrete goals or very aspirational goals and and that's one thing that I think that I bring to the table along with my two running mates I'm running with with two two people Lucas Cole and Rebecca Lazarus because we think that we need that critical mass to how to make those changes that need to be done so I hope you vote for me and vote for us in November and thank you very much again thank you yes thank you for allowing us to come here tonight it's been very interesting I hope you vote for me because I'm not a career
050politician I am here to try I seen some things and I see a growing dissatisfaction I in our teachers our teachers are our best asset in our district and we need to listen to them we need to empower the to make decisions critical classroom decisions to educate and to make a connection to our children make sure that they have those positive school memories that they can take with them for the rest of their lives I'd like to as a board member I'd like to actually sit and work with dr. Swift to figure out I think she does a great job I think she's tireless in her duties as superintendent but I feel like the board needs to give her some directive as to how they want the school district to run so I am stepping
051up I hope other people in coming elections will also step up because I think we need to have unique and very fresh perspectives come to the board so we have different opinions of how to run the school and make it the best in the in the community thank you I want to thank you as well for this experience it's been really interesting I'm running for school board because I feel like I bring a unique perspective as being an educational policy person I would like there to be research-based policy that we are then continuing to check the data on we have ongoing problems like the achievement gap and the school to Prison Pipeline and we don't always keep up with trying to see whether we're making a dent in those problems and improving them from time
052to time I think it's extremely important one of the reasons that I got involved is that I went to school board meetings and I saw the some level of anger and upset between teachers and parents and I think that it's important that we include all stakeholders in decision-making I've been on the policy committee trying to decide whether we're going to do later school start times I think it's really helpful for the board to direct those those committees by giving them deadlines by giving them Robles because those can go on and on without really taking seriously it's the parents the teachers who are in the room they don't become working meetings anymore so I'm running for school board because I think I bring a diverse perspective that nobody else brings my name is Suzanne Perkins and
053I hope you vote for me one mistake the last time too so well I'm sorry get your time set the league thanks the candidates for participating in tonight's forum to those who contribute questions and to CTN for making the program possible these forms will be rebroadcast on channel 17 a number of times between now and the election they are also available undemanding under computer or smartphone go to our website lwv and arbor org and look for the link to the programs and please urge your friends and fellow residents to watch these forums to for additional nonpartisan information on candidates and ballot issues go to vote for one one org the league's voter resource guide covering local state and federal candidates and the current current proposals that will appear on your ballot and please don't forget
054to vote November 6th thank you [Music] you