001good evening welcome to the dallas center grimes school board candidate forum my name is ann wimhoff and i'm the director of communications at dcg i will be tonight's moderator tonight we welcome the most candidates that have run for dcg school board in the last 15 years we are using this experience and have worked with students to make this this evening an educational opportunity for them to learn about our government system there will be two students asking the questions to the four candidates present this evening york magason and isabella baumann additionally ap government and u.s history students work to develop the questions you will hear asked to our candidates tonight there will be an opportunity in a moment for each candidate to introduce themselves please know there are write-in candidates however we limited tonight's event to
002those that are formerly registered and on the ballot on tuesday november 2nd all dcg registered voters have the opportunity to vote for the at-large open seat along with voters in district 1 and district 2 voting for candidates for the one open seat in each of their districts we have asked the candidates to limit their answers to three minutes at the conclusion of tonight's question and answer session with students the candidates will be available for members of the audience to get to know them on a one-on-one basis a final few reminders before i turn it over to the candidates this evening please silence your cell phones and we als also ask you to hold your applause it takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there candidates and good leadership is important so thank you
003i'd also like to thank the polk county sheriff's department for their presence here this evening thank you to bcp live for helping with the sound and the recording of tonight tonight's meeting will be posted on our youtube channel 24 hours after the conclusion of this evening's forum i would now like to turn it over to the candidates to introduce themselves hello my name is megan dickinson meg um i live in dallas center i am a mom of two children and i decided to throw my hat in the ring for the at-large position um one of the reasons i did that is because i'll only ever be able to run for an at-large position because i live in the country um that said i think that i can bring a unique perspective to the board and
004that unique perspective comes threefold i am a mother of two small children who will be in the dcg district for oh heck i don't know they're in third grade now so at least nine more years and that's really important to have a hand in their education as things move forward i'm also a former educator i was a an adjunct english professor at dmacc i also had the opportunity to teach english at st cloud state university um while i was doing my graduate work there shockingly enough my master's thesis i just got an email about this has been downloaded 4351 times which is astonishing in 107 countries so i feel a little famous because i have a microphone and a really popular thesis from like five years ago um but in teaching i have been able
005to see what the the end result of a lot of iowa school education is and there's absolutely room for improvement there and i think that that's something that i can bring to the table and finally i am also a forward-facing business owner in dallas center and what that means is that i interact with the public on a daily basis six days out of the week everybody in this room knows where you can find me for better or worse so that's something that i can bring to the table as well a lot of availability thank you [Applause] oh you can applaud go ahead no i'm kidding my name is tyler eason i am running for the at-large position on on the school board um as an introduction uh i'm an assistant dallas county attorney that's my
006my day job i'm married to stephanie who's a nurse practitioner a geriatric nurse practitioner i have a son bennett who is in sixth grade and a daughter lucy who is in third grade lucy asked me if i was running for president tonight so no um i think i'll save some of this stuff for for our first question but i'm very excited to see so many people out here i think whatever happens in the in the election it's fantastic to see so many citizens and parents wanting to get to know us and getting involved in the board so i think that's fantastic so i look forward to answering your questions good evening i'm monica malmberg my husband adam and i have lived in grimes for 11 years now we have two children hayden is in third
007grade at northridge and emma is a junior in high school we're very active in our church community my husband has coached youth sports forever so he probably has coached one of your children at some point i am involved with the high school after prom committee and organize all the teacher appreciation meals and activities for our high school teachers when i was younger i always wanted to be a teacher and my life took me different paths so instead of teaching i thought maybe why not try to be on school board to at least make a difference that way i just want to say a big thank you to every single person that's here anybody that's going to watch online i think what we've learned over these past few years is that more voices at the table
008and more people getting a seat in terms of what this future looks like for our district is going to be a good thing so regardless of your belief system regardless of where your views are at which candidate you support i firmly believe that as a district the more voices that we have it's going to be a good thing so thank you my name is brandon mcnaise i married the most beautiful woman in the world she's over there her name is erin she's from adele but we're not going to hold that against her okay sorry i had to call her out i have three boys at dallas center elementary i graduated from iowa state university go cyclones with a finance degree and then i went to work with at principal financial group and investment accounting i
009did currency trading and then ultimately i got to what my dream job was i got into real estate and i got to work in houston and austin and develop these amazing these huge buildings right and then my life changed a little bit my dad was diagnosed with als and then i quit corporate life to take care of him six months later he passed away and what that gave me is a perspective not only do i have the perspective of graduating from dallas center grimes living here my entire life other than college but i have a perspective of searching after something and going after something that doesn't actually matter and so it gave me a new outlook on life an outlook that says that i want to take risks an outlook in life that says that
010no matter what i want to be about the values that i stand for so i'm super excited that we get to stand up here today and tell you guys about what we're for not necessarily what we're against and what the future looks like for this district so thank you all right so we have our first question for the candidates and for this we'll go from this way to this way starting with meg my bad starting with tyler then on to monica and brandon and then meg and so the first question is what prompted your campaign for the dallas underground community school district board well i would say it's the same thing that that drove me to run four years ago i think it's a commitment to local control i think it's increased teacher retention increased
011teacher recruitment trying to formulate a clear plan for growth and fiscal responsibility i don't think the pandemic has changed any of those reasons as to why i wanted to be a part of this school board four years ago i try very hard not to be a single issue candidate or revolve what i'm talking about as a single issue i think the question that the pandemic has created is when we get through this and we will get through this is what's next what's next for dallas center grimes right what's next for our growth what's next for teachers what's next for students and we have to be able to answer that question what's next um the other reason that i run is because i've been given so much from this community my wife and i moved here
012seven years ago and we were welcomed and it started with my daughter or my son taking optional kindergarten and loving that program and uh receiving so much back i learned a lot from my grandfather my grandfather was superintendent of schools of waukee schools for 30 years his name was claire eason and he did a lot and if i can amount to one percent of what he did for his community i'll be happy with what i've done service is important to my family service is important to me i joined the national guard at 38 and had to get signed off so i wouldn't die during boot camp because i was a little old and but i made it and you know i think that service to one's community utilizing the skills and traits that we have
013to better the people that we live with and leave our town and our place that we reside in a better place than we left it is what we're asked to do on this earth and so this is my little way of trying to contribute back i decided to run for school board because we're a growing district we have opportunities to improve we also have opportunities to remain the great district that we are i am a big believer that parents need to be involved in their child's education in one way or another and have a willingness to serve and give back this is my way of being able to serve and give back it really does take all of us i really am a big believer that it does take a village being an involved parent
014means volunteering at your child's school when the opportunities arises talking to your child about their day you know what are they learning who are their friends talking to their child and having that communication with your children's teacher if i'm elected to the board i will bring fresh perspectives as i have a lens into both elementary and high school and by having the third grader and a junior i always plan to put students and families first be an advocate for the teachers we really need to retain our amazing staff so we need to listen to them what their wants and needs are and also be a voice for parents i'm not joining the school board just so i can push my thoughts and ideas i really do want to be a voice for other parents because
015sometimes you don't necessarily want to speak up i will tell you i'm not afraid to speak up so if you have a problem or you have an idea or whatever it is i would love to hear it and i would love to be that voice for you so if i'm being honest i never really thought that i would be here i never wanted to run for a political office for school board but a few years ago i was asked by a group of parents to attend a parent meeting with the administration see the issues that we're going to talk about tonight just didn't start overnight years ago these parents basically said we have a ton of issues and we don't feel like our voices are being hurt again it didn't start during covey this was
016prior to covet and this one person that i know said hey would you come and support us and would you help lend some voice and credibility to what we're trying to say and i said sure but if i'm being honest i didn't pay much attention to what was going on on our school district and so i said could you inform me maybe like of a story or something that's happened she told me a story that changed everything for me she told me a story of her young boy that was in fifth grade and was getting bullied constantly nothing was ever done right and one day this young boy ended up going to the bathroom and when he was in the bathroom kids snuck in under the stall they pulled his pants down they spanked him
017and the school district didn't call her okay she found this situation out as she was putting him to bed she talked to him about it she called the district the next day and the kids that did this weren't punished they had to say that they were sorry and then to punish them they were given a pizza party okay and so i'm listening to this mom tell me this story about her kid which could be my kid which could be your kid and something inside of me started get to get fired up she told me that the only disciplinary action that was taken was that her son was removed from his classmates and given separate bathroom privileges so the kid that's already getting bullied is going to be further pushed away from his peer group and
018the bullies that should have had disciplinary action that can't handle the bathroom right nothing happened to them so i attended this meeting and i was shocked surprised as i watched parents moms and dads crying tears because of the things that were happening inside of this district and they felt like no one was listening to him not a single person they felt like was listening to him and i watched as the administration looked at all of them and you know how you have a kid and you could say something to them but when they're watching tv they don't actually hear what you're saying what i watched is this administration the people that were present they heard the grievances by the parents but they didn't actually listen to them and it was at that point that something
019stirred inside of me i raised my hand and i said this statement that i stand by today i said you have to realize and we look at all of this and from a political standpoint but you have to realize we actually don't work for you every single person in this room has a stake at the table every single person in this room has a right and a responsibility for their voices to be heard and far too often in politics and in school boards across this country our voices aren't heard and so i said if our voices aren't heard we have a responsibility as parents first not school board members but as parents to speak up for our kids that's why i'm running and the more i listen to parents and ask them questions the stories
020that i hear would just disturb me and i want change in our district and i think that it's possible still when i learned that there would be an at-large position opening up on the board i knew that my personal skill set could be very useful to our community and like i said before since i live outside the city limits i'll only ever be able to run for an at-large position and to borrow edit and change a little bit just for keeping it clean um some phrasing from a friend who finds himself in a similar situation how do they ever think they're going to get folks with poop on their boots to make decisions and i think that's a valid question our rural households deserve a representation and dallas center deserves more voices on the board
021we need to work together to bridge our two communities and one way of sharing this is to have a more equal balance of representation on the board additionally in owning a public-facing business i hear a lot of stories all sorts of people tell me stories on a daily basis and i wouldn't change that for anything however some of the stories they come in and tell me really tug at my heart just like brandon said i know that story i know those people it's hard and they need to be spoken up for when i hear parents talking about their kids being bullied or hurt at school and not called or not communicated with it's unacceptable when i hear teachers aren't able to take their own kids to doctor's appointments because there aren't available substitutes that's also
022unacceptable and what i hear associates who have to leave our district to go work other jobs so that they can make a living wage that's absolutely unacceptable these kinds of the stories are what make me want to help i volunteered in dce classrooms admittedly not as much as i would like but i've been there when teachers cry because they're overwhelmed or when the students want to save their holiday gifts from school to take home and put under the tree because they know there won't be any more at home i've also taught in my own classrooms where i see how unprepared many graduates of the iowa school system are for the next steps in life and while part of that is the hubris of being a young adult part of that is the fault of our
023school system our students are lacking critical thinking skills and the ability to ask questions they'd rather be spoon-fed information and assurance of getting the right answer or taken the first bit of research without evaluating any of their sources this leads to major difficulties in college and in the rest of their life and finally like i said before i'm a forward-facing member of this community i see several of you several of you on a weekly if not daily basis i'm here for you always i live a life of service in everything that i do i volunteer on committees in our town the seasonal fund committee i'm also a member of the betterment committee for our for dallas center and i feature local business maker makers and business women business people i believe in community and being
024a voice for our community our second question is in what ways can the dcg educational model promote fairness equity and respect within the classroom in order to create a positive and safe environment for students to share their ideas and monica we would love to hear from you first so first i think we need to ensure that both students and teachers know and understand the model both students and teachers need to be held accountable for creating a safe environment where all can share their thoughts and ideas in a respectful manner and there needs to be um sorry teachers need to feel safe and respected in their classroom and should be able to communicate with parents so if a student or a teacher has a problem they should be able to call the parent and not have
025fear of the parent yelling at them or going to administration because their son or daughter got in trouble we need to go back to accountability and students need to be accountable for how they behave in school one thing that i like i said earlier i want to be a voice for parents and for students so um if students aren't feeling comfortable we need to understand why we need to be having those conversations so if a student wants to come to me or go to their parent i would love to have that conversation i would love to have the conversation with administration if the school board's not aware that there's an issue we can't address it so i think that's the biggest thing but going back to the basics of respect for all for both teachers
026administrators and students is number one priority york i hope this isn't your question because i'm going to rephrase it a little bit so sorry apologize if it's yours but the question i want to answer is this i think as a community we have to it's nice to talk about this stuff but we have to kind of back up let's go back to the basics what is public education for and i think every single person in this room and every single person that's watching online would say that public education is to take all of our kids right and to turn them into the best versions of themselves for not only our community but our society right i think everybody would agree that that's probably the case what happens though is the discrepancy of how we get
027there so when i see questions like this and i see words like equity fairness i'm going to throw in another word and it's tolerance it's really easy to say these words and to be about these words but far too often not everybody but far too often these words are thrown around and the people that preach because it is a belief system that preach tolerance out of one side of their mouth are the same people that out of the other side of their mouth are preaching hate towards ideas that they don't believe in right and i'm sitting here and i'm looking at our classroom and i have a question for the community do you think things have gotten better since we have been promoting more equity and more tolerance do you think that classrooms have become
028a better version of themselves my question is this i i just found out from a parent that we had the uh gay sexual or not gay uh gender sexuality alliance come and present to all of our middle schoolers that's fine the parents weren't made aware that this was happening and they didn't want their kids to participate so we're promoting equity and fairness but kids were walking out of the classroom because they didn't feel like this was a spot for them they didn't feel like this is appropriate thing that we should be talking about so if we're going to preach equity and tolerance what about those kids that had to walk out of the room everybody is on this side talking about a sort of a left agenda and no one cares about the other side
029and i don't think that's what the classroom should be about i'm going to state a radical idea and this might be something that's crazy what if we instead of like let's take math so if you're a math teacher i'm not picking it let's take math and i walk into a math classroom as a student i don't see a transgender flag i don't see a picture of jesus or anything like that i see the american flag and we talk about math i have no idea what the teacher is about other than i know this teacher loves to teach math what if in all of the subject matters again take out everything that the left says we want our because their beliefs taught and everything that the right says that hey these are our beliefs that we
030went taught what if we didn't teach any of them what if we went back to the basics what if we this is a radical idea too what if we had a class that taught our kids how to change a tire or balance a checkbook or actually function in society when we focus so much on equity on feelings what we do is we create an environment where you will always have a group left out when you teach belief systems a group will always be left out but when you teach principles in school no group can be left out so what i want to do is create an environment where none of that is in the classroom and i think everybody on the left and the right would agree that that's fair having been an educator i
031know that the only way to teach is when you're passionate about something and absolutely nobody goes into teaching for the money or the glory or the fame or any warm fuzzy stuff you only do it because you feel called to help and it calls to you right it tugs at your heart strength you feel compelled to do something positive in somebody else's life my students often laughed when i nerded out about things like source evaluations and ethos they'd roll their eyes and giggle but they'd listen and they knew that if it was safe for me to share things that i was passionate about then it'd be safe for them to do so too leading by example is a powerful tool and our teachers and staff need to be supportive enough to get their passion back
032because without those teachers we don't have a school we also have to ensure that our teachers and staff have the foundational knowledge that allows for open discussions in the classroom as our district grows and changes diversity is guaranteed our administration needs to ensure that our educators are well versed in how to handle different viewpoints cultures religions and races in our classroom we might have students whose culture calls for fasting and if a teacher forces them to eat during their fast there could be severe cultural consequences and yes this is based on an actual anecdote albeit not from this district and not only is this exposure to other cultures going to happen in our day-to-day lives it's actually required by state law in the iowa core standards for first grade social studies for the content anchor
033standard in civics and government teachers are to help students and i quote compare and contrast rules or laws within different communities and cultures according to 21st century skills this is a real thing that iowa law dictates the beauty of this assignment remember again teacher nerd is that it cannot possibly exist in a vacuum in order for this project to make sense to anyone age-appropriate context must be provided unexplained and our teachers are trained and licensed professionals who have the skills to masterfully explain to our first graders why it's illegal to run out of gas on the autobahn and why a day of the dead is a national holiday in mexico and again iowa law requires this for first grade another idea for aiding our district in its ability to reverse our changing population is a
034higher hiring of a coordinator of equity and inclusion this position is designed to act as a safe space to ask questions educate our teachers students staff parents and community to handle these changes they're coming one way or the other these people exist the internet exists your kids are exposed to a lot of stuff and it's the conversation that's really going to make the difference this coordinator would also act as a point person to ensure that our curriculum and policies are up to the standards set in place by dallas center grimes and the state of iowa bearing in mind that once again these are set in place by the state i'm going to try and answer the question that you asked so we're talking about the dcg educational model i don't think anybody else mentioned what
035the dc educational model is it talks about uh communication consistency and collaboration and it talks about collaborative culture focus on learning and results oriented that's what the board has come up with that's the dcg educational model so that's what we're talking about i have a lot of stuff written down but i've also heard a lot of stuff what we want to teach our children to do is to be critical thinkers we don't want to feed them facts and figures so that they can recite facts and figures back right we want to teach them facts and figures so that they ask the next question and then the next question and the question after that to actually critique what they're being taught to ask questions about why that's that's how you create a a fair environment an
036environment that that engenders respect the other thing that we have to teach or promote within the classroom is that disagreement is okay disagreeing with one another in a civil and fair way is fine i don't hate the person because i disagree with them on an issue and too many times we get down the track of because i disagree with you on one thing you do not exist to me disagreement is part of critical thinking it's also important that the board get feedback from parents if the board doesn't know what's happening they can't correct it and i think that issues have to be raised with the board and not talked about within the community and not talked about is anecdotal if issues are raised with administrators in the board and then the board administrators ignore that
037then shame on them and we have to fix that lastly i don't think we can rely on schools alone to teach fairness and equity and respect we have to teach it at home we have to teach respect in our houses if if schools are are teaching respect and fairness and equity from eight to five but we as parents aren't modeling that from five to one ever it's a lost cause so i i think that the educational model is is spot on i think that in order to create that positive and safe environment to share those ideas we make it so that questioning ideas is okay all right for the next question it's quite a long one so i'll just say first that brandon will be starting what are your policy and funding priorities for our
038school district what are your plans to keep the school district fiscally responsible how will you ensure equal representation and funding of all aspects of the school and do you agree with raising taxes to fund large projects in my three minutes i will try to answer all of that so i think i want to take a little bit of a step back um i think it's good to go line item by little why are we spending something you know is it useful right and i used to do that in the corporate world in real estate i mean it makes sense but as i start digging in a little bit as you talk to the teachers right the greatest asset we have so if you talk to the teachers some very similar things some some ideas start
039popping up and one of them is this a teacher shared with me she said did you realize that we at dcg are some of the lowest paid teachers amongst our peer communities i didn't know that so i'm questioning i said okay so why is that the case she told me that a teacher just left to go ten minutes down the road to make fifteen thousand more dollars okay then you start to research and you look at our sub pay and i know some substitute teachers and they said well i wouldn't prefer to go to dcg because i make less there than i do in these other communities again you start digging in and when we can talk about budget we can talk about line items but when you dig in you start hearing something different
040and these are our greatest assets then you start talking about paraeducators my wife is one of them people 100 percent do not get into teaching especially paraeducation in our school district to become rich but what has happened over these past few years and we can get into the budget but what i can tell you is the past few years some of the best para educators that we have have left our district because and i'm not kidding you they can make more money flipping burgers at mcdonald's than working with our kids all day now i'm sitting here looking at this if you don't think this is an issue i'm probably not your guy but i sat there and looked at it and i said it's really easy to give lip service and say hey these teachers
041matter but we actually don't put our money where our mouth is we don't create an environment instead of losing the best teachers why aren't we the most competitive we can build all these amazing facilities and i love it but why aren't the best and brightest from the other communities coming here and then they're talking about on their school board meetings how people are coming to our district the other thing in the last minute that i have that i don't think many people are probably going to bring up and i'm not here to debate whether this is right or wrong but on top of the governor's list right now is school choice so there's a potential that your tax dollars will follow your student wherever you decide to go so we can talk about the current
042budget but i'm here to predict something unless things are changed right now because i've heard a ton of people say well we left johnson to come here and the same thing is happening here so we're going to leave unless things are changed here those dollars will leave this community we'll leave this school district and something else most people don't know about as of october 1st every single year there's a head count that's done at the school and roughly seven thousand dollars per kid is given to the school district from the federal and the state levels well for me and my family if things don't change i'm pulling my kids out i will homeschool them or hey let's start another private school but i'm here to tell you right now if i pull my kids out
043there's twenty one thousand dollars so instead of saying what are we gonna do with the current budget what are you gonna do with the budget shortfalls if we don't change these policies and by the way then instead of talking about the new building we're going to talk about what teachers we need to get rid of insofar as i understand the current financial situation of our district bearing in mind that i was an english teacher right very different sides of campus okay not mathematically inclined um it's ish right like it's it's all right we got a fancy new building our building should hold us for a while based on the growth that we've got going on so that's fantastic we're going to hold tight for about for a few years it's imperative that we keep a
044close eye on this though because these these communities are growing like gangbusters and we need to pay attention because we're going to need more neighborhood schools there's a proposal on the table for an addition actually pretty close to our house in dallas center for 270 new homes and 75 units of townhomes this is over the next 10 years right so we've got a little bit of wiggle room but with those people come a whole bunch of kids so neighborhood schools are going to be a real thing and we need to make sure that both communities both dallas center and grimes are represented equally when we're talking about these new buildings our district does seem to have a general grasp on spending appropriately however it is absolutely time for our board to conduct a pay study
045for our teachers and support staff i'm going to echo what brandon said our teachers are woefully underpaid our support staff is horrendously underpaid this is a problem our last pay study showed like it was long enough ago that our teachers are leaving and it's they're going like you said it's 10 minutes away they're going to johnston they're going to urbandale they're going places that they can make a living wage because our wages have not kept up with inflation and we're losing them and our benefits need to be reevaluated too right that's part of it as far as raising taxes um i would be remiss to make a blanket statement on a hypothetical situation it's not something i do i don't live in blanket statements i don't live in absolutes historically and currently the dcg district
046has done a wonderful job of rolling budgets and managing their debts so what that means is that as the debt of one major project is coming near its paying off thing then the district will take on new debt they're not going to take on a whole bunch of debt at one time and find themselves in a pickle they're going to pay it off in a reasonable amount of time um so as as that has been historically the case we haven't found ourselves in a situation where we would need to raise any taxes for that um however like i said these are hypotheticals then we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it yeah i mean let's look out for our teachers though it's worth noting that we need to pay them more than
047what we do so when talking about policy and and funding i think it's important to talk about the numbers and if you look at the last number submitted the state the average pay of a teacher in the state of iowa is about 59 to the average pay of a of a teacher at dallas and grimes is 58 7. that's the numbers so we're right at average is that is that good enough probably not but we're not we're not paying at the bottom of the pay scale okay where we do need to focus is first year teachers first your teachers in dallas center grimes the beginning salary is about 44 600. you can go to and i'm going to list off some communities you can go to waukee west des moines van meter urbandale southeast polk
048north polk johnston indianola ankeny and boone and get paid more as a first year teacher that is where we are hurting that is where we cannot recruit because we aren't offering what other districts are offering around us i'm not saying that we don't need to support the teachers that are currently here we have to but if we're going to pay them more we have to find out where it's going to come from in the budget that's important right we can't just say we're gonna we're gonna pay people more and that's it because that means higher taxes higher levies stuff like that so what do we need to do we need to look at administrative costs and reduce administrative costs to me the most important dollars are the ones that go to the front line teachers
049and and affect students okay we talked about becoming competitive with teacher and associate pays for those of you that don't know about paraeducators and associates they are the backbone of our district they're the ones that do the one-on-one teaching with students they're the ones that do all the hard work and we don't pay them high enough we need to talk about reducing our bond and vettedness so right now this community has been very supportive of its schools since 2010 we've passed bonds that equate to about 85 million dollars and that's all buildings that we've built and that's fantastic to me to answer your question do i agree with raising taxes i think you go through the bond process you make sure that there's a need you put it to a vote to the community and
050if 60 of the community agrees well then then we do it if not we find out where the community doesn't agree but fiscal responsibility is important but i think we do have to stay the course i think it's important to continue supporting what the board does fiscally i will also respond to something i heard i i don't think things are as bad as it's set up here and i think that if things continue i will keep my kids in this school because i believe in this school i believe in this community i believe in the teachers that are here and the administration and the board we all know that we're a growing district and we have to be planning for our future plan plan plan i cannot say that enough i've seen the new plans
051for the high school and i am super excited for all of that to come to life with that being said we have to get it right the first time it's going to cost a lot of money and if we get down the road and we don't have enough space for band and choir all of a sudden but we have this amazing turf football stadium we're going to have a problem right so we need to make sure that we're planning for all of our aspects which i think we've done a great job so far from what i've seen from the high school the pandemic showed us that we were not prepared from a technology standpoint not saying that every other school district was but i think that we need to make sure that we're taking that
052as a lesson learned i don't know about you guys but having my second grader bringing home packets for way too long was way too much for me so making sure that if we really want to implement the laptops across the board then we need to plan for that we need to make sure that we have one-to-one ratio from kindergarten all the way through i don't want to want any new taxes i will tell you there's a lot more to school funding and finance than what you all think but i will say i think we can all agree that the city of grimes we pay a lot of money in property taxes and i know a lot of people wonder where that all goes so i don't want any new taxes but with that being said
053our tax levy does bounce around quite a bit i've heard it's like six dollars per thousand to eleven dollars per thousand up to i think 17 is what i've heard so um we need to make sure that we're being fiscally responsible making sure that we're prioritizing the needs over the wants of the district and our teachers i would love to pay teachers more i would love to get paid more at my own job too i think we all would but that's something that we have to look at when it comes to the budget is as others said we can't just throw more money at them if we don't have the money to begin with so just making sure that we're looking in the years to come to make sure that we are levying appropriate dollars
054as needed so our next question has a couple in it and they are how do you plan to address covet 19 in the district as the virus continues to change what actions would you take to prevent the spread of the disease what are some positive key takeaways from the pandemic and how can we use those as we move forward i get to feel this one first which i feel is a little loaded but i'm just kidding um i think that one of the positives that our family can take away from coven is that we learned that our kids are absolute champions um their resiliency through all of this while the adults around them scrambled around like crazy people was fantastic somehow our kids came out more sane i think than the grown-ups did those are
055my kids right up there and see we make them do boring stuff like come to school board candidate forums champions um and i think that that's you know fantastic we were also really lucky though our kids have fantastic immune systems not everybody else's kids do some kids have had to be in isolation this whole time and that's really unfortunate for those families um i know that sometimes so there are some special education kids who are legally supposed to be able to participate in the specials with their classmates but they can't because there's no mass mandate and it is illegal for teachers to ask students to wear masks so that these special education students could also participate in library and guidance and art um that said i know that those those two anyway wouldn't mind popping
056on a mask for 45 minutes while they did us some art projects so that their friend could come um i do wonder um about that a lot are we doing more harm than good by ostracizing some of our our students who need more care than than those who don't with this particular instance um please don't confuse this story like this thought process as a a push for a universal mass mandate because it's illegal in iowa or at least it will be after the aclu injunction expires um and we learned from our initial covered response that maybe these days masks aren't appropriate for all people at all times and i surely don't want to take someone someone's bodily autonomy away that's not a thing i would do however sometimes and in some instances it's the right
057thing to do especially as we get closer to flu season because i swear as great as my kids are they bring on the flu every single year and it's disgusting and i'm over it um all of this said uh again english english teacher not a doctor not a doctor my brother however is an er nurse at broadlawns and he's he's over there so don't tell him i'm talking about him please and he was one of my first calls when i turned in my candidacy paperwork because i knew that masks would be on the docket and i knew that i needed some medical information about this and he said that the best way to mitigate this is masks and washing your hands and this was at a time that the high school didn't have any soap
058in the bathrooms because of tick-tock thanks tick-tock so that's really gross we didn't have masks we didn't have soap thankfully the soap is back but i think that when it comes to mitigating covid we all just need a little bit of kindness we need a little bit of respect we're all tired we're all exhausted but we need to care for each other and i think that's really what it comes down to so i think it's important to rely upon medical expertise public health expertise educational expertise what parents say what kids say you have to have that discussion okay um as we've seen throughout this pandemic particularly in the last six to nine months covet is a moving target right we had what i call the regular variant now we have the crispy variant right regular
059in delta who knows what's in six months okay who knows what the winner is going to bring who knows with flu what it's going to bring so there's really no way to say what a policy policy should be but i can tell you what i will rely on to create a policy to me you have to have a collaborative discussion between experts in the community to make that decision your question talks about what actions would you take to prevent the spread i'm vaccinated that's a personal choice of everything of everybody excuse me but i think if you if you talk to people and look at what the cdc and everybody's saying she said washing your hands right one of those simple things social distancing as best as possible staying home when you get sick the
060most important thing is getting information from those who are experts in the field i'm an attorney i don't know the next thing from what copa19 is versus what i've been told but i sure will rely on what my wife the nurse practitioner tells me or my friend the pharmacist or my friend the physician okay and i will rely on them and then have a conversation with the community as how to best move forward i also think you have to look at data you have to look at absentee rates number of cases in dallas and polk county vaccination rates guidance from all those health care practitioners masks is obviously a political hot button issue choice is important parental input input and choice is important you also talk about the takeaways from covet if we look back
061to the first six months of covid and we think about the grace that we gave one another and the compassion and the understanding we had birthday uh cavalcades for kids that couldn't celebrate their birthday and so we had cars drive by we had my kids didn't have physical contact with their grandparents for a year and we think about back to when we gave each other some grace and some understanding the other thing that the school learned is adaptability agility right streaming and recording classes those things that we can pivot if necessary i think we have um lessons that we've learned over the past year and a half on what we did right what we could do better nobody's prepared for a pandemic though so i think we have to give credit to this current school
062board for everything that they did do in a time of what we all i think deemed as a crisis last night during the school board meeting mr grimes gave a covet update and he said that as a district which is plus 100 kids we are averaging 10 cases or less a week which has been on the decline for the last four weeks so 3 500 kids and all together we've got maybe 10 cases on average this week i believe the number was six so i would say that's pretty good right we're never going to be 100 clovid's here to stay just like cold and flu season strep throat all of those other fun things that our kids bring home all the time vaccines are available to teenagers they're available to adults right now soon they're
063going to be available to our elementary age kiddos and i would just recommend families to do what is best for them both in terms of masks and vaccines it doesn't work for everybody and we cannot force it upon everybody either as a district we need to ensure that what we are doing to keep kids and staff in our buildings whatever that takes to keep them all safe and healthy but i think that's one thing that we did learn in covit is being out of the building and even hybrid was not healthy it was not good on mental health it was maybe we didn't get sick but i think a lot of kids mental health declined as well so i think that's our number one priority as a school district is what we can do to
064keep our kids and our staff and our buildings and like i said kovit's here to stay we have to learn to live with it steps to combat it like tyler said hand washing sanitizing cleaning back to the basics and everything that we do for cold and flu and strut season right wash your hands don't breathe on people don't spit on people common sense and i would say too last night at the board meeting if you guys didn't hear our coast our custodians are working overtime right now to keep our buildings extra cleaned and sanitized so parents high school students if you see custodians tell them thank you for all of the work that they are doing and keeping everybody healthy and safe and no more tearing soap dispensers off the walls in high school please
065so one thing i learned is that our kids and the adults are super dirty okay we got dirty kids all right they're picking their noses they're picking their butts but one thing that worked it seems like is hey we're all washing our hands more we have hand sanitizer everywhere and we're cleaning the surfaces i don't know if you guys are like me but during flu season none of us got the flu so i was sitting there like okay so when we wash our hands after we go to the bathroom this stuff works um in terms of covered numbers i don't know where you got your data but i'm close to what you have i saw on the web page so i was on the web page and as of october 21st we have 11 students
066and teachers out 11. so when we talk about coveted mitigation i love that the students got to ask questions i like to be a little bit more direct and i wish the taxpayers got to ask the questions and i'll say right now that i would never be for a mask mandate ever i will never make that decision because i fundamentally this is what i believe you will never convince me that some elected official and i include myself in that statement will care more about your kid than you will parents should always be the key stakeholder in their child's education and i will not i i will make blanket statements i will never ask a district to mask all of their kids that's a personal choice if you want to send your kids in math teachers
067if you want to wear a mask that's up to you and that's fine i will also in you know it's not on the docket yet but vaccine mandates i would never require a student and i would never require anything from our teachers that really why do i why is it my business it's between you and your doctor you make the decision and i think the problem in the community what we had seen is 90 something percent of the community last year said we want our kids in school and the board didn't follow that and i can tell you right now that if we talk about data the data suggests the safest place for our kids to be is not at their homes it's actually in the schools if you want to talk about underserved underprivileged
068kids the safest environment for them to be in to learn talk about access to school lunch access all these program programs that's in our schools so i will never before sending our our kids out again in some hybrid learning when i don't think that it makes sense now granted we want to create the best environment for all of our kids so what what happens is autoimmune compromised kids kind of get pushed to the side right and if i'm being honest i never really thought a lot about this until my nephew was born who is non-verbal and i understand what it looks like to be a parent and not know what you're going to do and i see the stress that my family members because he's not going to wear a mask and so i've talked
069to parents already in the district and what i would say is this let's create the safest environment for those kids whether it be a room and i know we already are kind of doing this but i want them to have the best environment possible but that's not going to be from taking away from the rest of our district so again i'm never going to be for mass that's your choice i'm never going to be for a vaccine that is your choice and i want family members in this community to realize you have the power and all of these decisions to dictate where this community goes from here all right we have our uh final the first five questions that we have and it's we're going to be starting with tyler and the question is in
070addition to the measures we have in place to support the social and emotional needs of students and staff what would you do to amplify support behind this topic within the district well i think there's a lot i could do as a board member i do want to go back to one thing i know mr mcnair talked about creating a room separate for immunocompromised students we can't do that that's that's not legal it's separate but equal we can't do that under plessy v ferguson so we got to figure it out how do you support social emotional needs of student staff and i'm going to talk to you guys because you're asking the question your mom and dads are listening they're the voters and i'm going to talk to you guys unplug from social media um social
071media back when i was young when facebook was created um it was created as a tool to connect with your family and connect with your friends and make it so that you could see what everybody was doing it is my honest humble opinion that it is a tool now used to bully to demean to debase it's toxic people have lost the ability to communicate interpersonally what we're doing right now right it is very easy to sit behind a keyboard and a screen and a pseudonym and say what you want to say and have no consequence as to how you say it so if you have a problem talk to the person also create supporting social emotional needs we have to destigmatize we have to make it okay to talk about mental health it is okay
072to not be okay i am a juvenile delinquency prosecutor as part of my docket in dallas county so i deal with juvenile crime and i could say wholeheartedly that mental health is behind almost all of the cases that i deal with we have to address it in school we have to say that it's okay to talk about i am intimately familiar with mental health personally anxiety depression and it's okay to talk about we also have to avoid provide support for students to be themselves in school students need to be okay with coming to a skill school building and knowing that the characteristics that define them are not just accepted but they're celebrated that they make up our student body and they make up our community they're our future leaders we want to work to bridge
073the gap between students staff and parents so that we can have this conversation so that if you guys have an issue you can talk to mom and dad they can talk to a board member and that can get taken care of i think right now we have divides between all those areas and we don't hear what's going on this has been a big topic with the school board i know it was briefly talked about last night at the school board meeting so i think if you follow what's going on in the school board meetings we're going to hear a lot about social and emotional health and needs over the next year a new group was recently created at the high school called sos stomp out stigma and i think this is really incredible to see
074i love seeing both faculty and students involved and talk talking about a topic that like tyler said it used to be taboo when i was in school we didn't talk about this we both have we have children that suffer from anxiety i have suffered my entire life i will tell you when i was a kid it was not okay i cried almost every single day of kindergarten and first grade because i was so scared and i didn't want to be at school but they didn't know how to deal with me so they would just send me to the principal's office and i would sit on a folding chair for hours until i quit crying like i was actually kicked out of preschool because i cried so much that my preschool teacher called my mom and
075said come and get her because i don't want to deal with her anymore if they would have talked about it if we could have gotten to the root cause sooner i wouldn't have had to go through all of that so i think it's amazing that the high school has started this group i would love to see this group be formed at oakview the middle school you know guidance counselors are a great resource at all levels in all the buildings one opportunity that i think we have and like i said my family's personally experienced this is better communication and transparency from the district parents don't know what resources are out there or that our schools can help with because we don't talk about it we don't talk about it until it's too late or until there's
076a problem then all of a sudden we scramble so if we can be transparent if we can communicate with our families of all the available resources and make it okay to talk about i think we would all be better off parents would be less stressed the children would be less stressed they would feel more comfortable in school that's our number one goal right students should feel safe and secure in school so guidance counselors at all levels i will say that students don't always feel comfortable talking to their guidance counselors and we need to fix that um personally our daughter i've asked her if she's ever gone and talked to her guidance counselor when she feels overwhelmed in school and she told me no why is that does she not know her guidance counselor does she
077not think that she's available so we need to get to the root cause of that and they need to be made available if that's going to classes and introducing themselves or whatever it needs to be we also need to think creatively and empower administrators in the buildings to collaborate with students and teachers to come up with creative measures that can be implemented all right i just want to say appreciate the jab real quick that was really good but i want to tell you what i'm about because it's really easy to poo-poo on other people's ideas when it's currently happening but i want to tell you about a vision about what i believe going forward i want to be positive and a great leader what he does is he doesn't turn to the left or to
078the right he tells you what he's for so i know when we're talking about this issue it's very similar to me to question number two when we talk about this issue when we talk about equality and fairness it's very similar to that question but i want to take a different turn so i want to ask the community do you think things have gotten better in our community as it relates to fairness equity all of these things if you think things are better than they were before i'm not your guy because i don't believe that they are it's easy to say we're going to hire counselors when they actually don't treat the root cause the root cause what i've noticed is that it's what we teach right now is the differences we we highlight how our
079students our differences i know of another district they did 55 cultures and they celebrated the different cultures they didn't talk about what made those cultures different when you when you highlight differences in a community all that does is create divide for example i can tell you right now that my two i have two nieces from uganda and this is a real example a a classmate of theirs another person of color said to my nieces that they weren't black enough right and that they were whitewashed because they were raised by white parents so my question as a community is do you think these things are getting better and our current mitigation strategies are working what i can tell you right now that this if you boil it all down for me it all goes back to
080bullying right jesus christ said that all of us right are created in the image of god you don't have to believe it but i'm telling you that i do believe it and that means whether your race your gender whatever color you are you have equal right to be in this school district you have equal right to be heard and if we actually we have a zero tolerance policy bill we don't actually discipline any of the kids so if you come to school and you make a kid feel less than if you talk down to them and say that they're not equal to you then something should happen to you i don't care what your political agenda i don't care what family you're from no kid should have to come to school but what we do
081is we like to sweep it under the rug and i'll give you a good example of this so we teach our kids we have to realize as a community our kids are so malleable and we teach our kids to be hateful to notice differences my youngest son there's a recording one of my nieces had and i just love this and she made a statement to my youngest son and she said don't you realize that i'm adopted my youngest son didn't realize that his niece from uganda was adopted and he goes wait what you're adopted and she looked at him and she said well don't you think i look different than my mom and my dad and he goes i had no idea that you were adopted because in our house we don't call them my
082black nieces we don't call them my white nieces they're just family and so when we get back to the basics and we we highlight the good things about this community all of the other junk all of it's going to melt away i live by the motto that we all do better when we all do better and i think that we all know that people do better when they feel connected to something and that's especially true for kids if we're able to help students identify a community that works for them that can only be a positive thing so when i've been speaking to teachers and parents and students and community members clubs and groups seem to be the best thing this seems to be like the most important thing that these people want um they would
083provide a huge sense of community to students who might otherwise be unable to or are disinclined to participate in more traditional extracurricular activities not everybody's going to be an athlete unfortunately not everybody's going to be a band kid or a drama kid i was totally abandoned but that's not for everyone that can be cost prohibitive it can be time prohibitive it can just not interest you but clips could be cool there this is also an arena where we could look at local businesses and see if they'd like to partner with or mentor students let's push the trades not everybody wants to go to college i'm totally for that somebody at some point earlier today said let's teach a class about changing tires heck yeah like literally a week ago two all right two weeks ago
084i had a tire explode on the side of the road i do know how to change a tire but those lug nuts are a two adult situation these days okay it's not it's not like the olden days but if we're able to get local businesses involved if we're able to build community not only within the schools themselves right you help you find your group for whatever it is that you're interested in think about it could be like plumbing it could be electrical work auto maintenance or there could be like like gamers or they could be like comic book people or they could be chess i don't know is there a chess club i should have i should have researched that before i just threw that out but crafts or poetry we could teach knitting in
085sixth grade you know whatever like anything that people and ch and kids could get excited about is going to build a sense of community and give a sense of grounding in a time that there is so much divide and this is also great for teachers because all of these clubs need to have a teacher sponsor and this is a way that we can get our educators involved with our kids not necessarily just in a very strict standard you know math english social studies science you know back and forth situation but it humanizes the teachers also and when you humanize someone it makes them a heck of a lot less scary conversation fixes a lot of things if you have questions and you can ask them in a safe way that's that's the best way that
086we can make people feel safe and i think that it's really important just to reiterate that our superintendent did mention last night at the board meeting that no kid should ever feel uncomfortable or scared and that we need to do better as a district and i think coming together is the only way that we can do that we will now have you guys uh go with your closing statements yeah we'll work in the reverse order all right so i think in closing what i want the community to know is if you you know those two candidates and me are running for the same seat you have the power to dictate where this community goes regardless of what you've been told you have the power to determine what happens in your children's education you are the
087primary stakeholder your voice matters the most so that means you need to go out and vote and you need to make your voice heard and uh i love the fact that we had questions from the kids but i think going forward i would love questions from the taxpayers and so just rapid fire really quick i would just want to answer a couple questions that i know that are coming up and i won't dance around the issues and i'm going to tell you exactly what i think i don't want to ever introduce critical race theory into our school when you study the historical background of that it's based on critical theory which was designed by karl marx again that goes back to my division thing i will never be for something that is divisional inside of
088our community i won't ever be for a biological boy ever going into a girl's bathroom or vice versa i know we like to dance around that issue and i feel for kids that say hey i don't feel comfortable in my own body and that hurts that they would feel like that that really just hurts me to my soul so we can create a special bathroom for them but honestly i don't think that it's appropriate to send a message hey if you're a boy you get to go into the girls bathroom i don't appreciate the lack of respect that we currently have for our teachers i'm not going to be okay with how our kids are currently flipping off the flag in school there's a lot of incidences that if you heard about animated sexual videos
089being shown at the elementary level all of these things are happening and no one really knows about it i am for material that has no sexual material in it at all because our kids like i said are so malleable our kids and what they learn in school will dictate the future of this community so going forward i want everyone to know in this room that regardless of what you've been told you you all and everyone watching online are the primary voice for what this district looks like going forward first of all i just want to tell all of you thank you for coming out to this tonight as ann said we have the most candidates ever running for school board in several years so this is a really exciting time in our community it's a
090really exciting time for our district to have some change and some fresh perspective your vote is your voice so please use it um here's a plug if you filed your absentee ballot get it in because it's due and it's not going to count so get it done and if you live in district 2 i just respectfully ask for your vote in support on november 2nd thank you i think this is great how many people are out here whatever whatever happens in this election it's fantastic that this many people gave up a night to come listen to candidates who guide their school and so that gives me solace uh thanks to you two for coming up and asking the questions and i know you were supported by your classmates that came up the questions but it
091takes a lot of guts to to sit in front of a lot of adults and ask tough questions so thank you for that um i think we have a great school district i'm proud to be a parent of a child in dallas in a grime school district do we have things we can work on absolutely we do but we have so much going better for us and for our district and for our children than than not we have fantastic teachers we have fantastic associates we have fantastic staff you are the the voice that guides the board and your vote matters and so i would ask for your vote as an at-large candidate but what i would ask you to do is vote vote that's how you get your message across there are differences in in
092candidates and and disagreeing is okay right but you have three very different people up for at large board seat and i think each brings its own qualities to the table but if this showing is indicative of what we have going forward for the district and you two are indicative of what's coming out of the district i think we're doing okay for real bravo i haven't had an audience this large in a really long time so thanks for coming out guys totally kidding um it's imperative that we all stay as involved in all levels of government right this is nonpartisan or at least it's supposed to be um but show up to your city council meetings show up for your neighbors show up to your school board meetings you have to to exercise your voice that's
093that's the number one thing um i would also like to say that this is just a really big community right and and communities are made up of neighbors and neighbors are people too so to reiterate the idea that disagreeing doesn't mean that we dislike each other or that we are you know fighting or anything like that and in fact it's the very opposite um in dallas center i've had people that i know don't agree with me on on next anything come to my defense when necessary right neighbors take care of each other i think that's an iowa thing we look out for one another and at the end of the day every single person up here only got involved in this because we care about our kids and we care about your kids and it
094takes a village and we all want to help that's the big thing right i think it was mr rogers and something about look for the helpers we want to be your helpers i want to be your helper thank you this concludes our forum this evening i want to send a final thank you for all of you much as they have thanked you for coming this evening being educated being an educated voter on the candidates is important step of this whole process we appreciate the time it takes to be responsible engaged and engaged in positive cordial discussion a special thank you to the candidates tonight for coming out and for their time this evening and a final thank you to our students isabella and york and it is it's really truly an exciting time for dcg
095from our growth to the strong education we offer to our students by our high quality teachers staff and the processes that we have in place we will look forward to the future of continued dcg excellence have a great evening [Applause]