001chamber as well as chris clarke so she will probably join us in a little bit but thank you for um being here and thank you to you candidates for participating in this and we know that running for office is an extremely brave but very important role here in our community so i just want to thank each and every one of you first earlier this evening the candidates did draw for numbers hence that's why you see them in the order that they are um there are five candidates that are running one candidate could not be with us this evening due to a prior commitment so we actually sat down with her and um actually went over the questions and we recorded her live answering that so you're gonna get to see it unedited and so you're
002going to get to see that i haven't even watched the full thing in the entirety so you'll get to see that live here tonight so i just want to make sure that you knew that the chandler chamber of commerce along with the gilbert chamber and the queen creek chambers we are business organizations but i know especially i can speak on behalf of chandler but we really view education as an economic development tool and how critical that is here as we continue to move forward as a city and so we are looking for those candidates not only that are education advocates that are also business advocates because it has to be that collaboration in order for us to move forward as a community the chandler chamber represents about 170 000 employees here within the city of
003chandler and we are the third largest chamber in the state i want to also acknowledge chandler unified school district and thank them for the use of this facility as well as being able to host it here because this is really important to our business community i also wanted to thank all of you that are joining us online tonight i know that we had well over almost 100 people that registered online that are watching as well so this is really important tonight's recording will also be available you can it's currently on the chandler unified school district youtube channel as well as the chandler chamber channel as well this debate is a civil opportunity for our candidates to discuss their ideas and philosophies on school governments and governance and current issues that are happening we have made
004every means to accommodate all of the candidates and as i mentioned before about mary lou so i didn't want to leave her out as well so it is my pleasure though to move forward and introduce today's moderator and i want to welcome lisa simpson and lisa will be our moderator lisa is with the arizona newspaper association and she joined them in april of 2021 she is proud to help her industry innovate and remain a vital part of democracy and a trusted source for innovation information for future generations lisa has over 20 years of experience yes she started when she was 10 and she has held many positions with many of the newspapers such as the arizona capitol times the arizona republic the east valley tribune and las vost publishing so she studied engineering at the
005colorado school of mines her family leads her needs her and led her to an early career here in arizona she was in the automotive industry product design and telecom industries she moved with her husband in 1995 and began her career in the newspaper industry they chose arizona because of the outdoor activities that they so love she's an avid sports fan and loves the local teams and loves politics even more so so please put your hands together and welcome lisa simpson [Applause] thank you terry i'm excited to be here so hello and good evening to everybody as terry said my name is lisa simpson i do not have a brother named bart just in case you were curious i am the executive director for the arizona newspapers association we have over 83 newspapers in the state
006of arizona and i'm pleased to be here this evening to moderate this event i want to thank all of you for coming i want to thank the channelified you the chandler unified school district um for hosting this for us um and to thank the candidates for making time out of their busy schedule to come and to participate in this um it's important to discuss these these relevant issues to the chandler education community once again tonight's program is also being hosted by chandler unified school district and we want to thank them for their support and for making this evening happen and for doing all the technology for us so next i would like to introduce you to the cusd governing board candidates in alphabetical order we have laura bruner who's the incumbent we have mary lou
007estes and once again mary lou was unavailable to come so we did do the pre-recorded and i'll remind you as we go through she did draw a number so you guys will see her responses as we go through some of the questions charlotte gala curt roars and patty serrano [Applause] okay so the candidates did draw numbers um so we're going to start in this order we'll have mary lou charlotte kurt laura and patty so just to go over the rules for tonight the debate committee has created questions that are non-biased and education focused for the purpose of defining the candidates views on school governance and the role in the education community in answering candidates need to provide brief and succinct responses so that the maximum amount of questions can be asked this debate is a
008civil opportunity for candidates to discuss their ideas and philosophy on school governance and current issues that pertain to this topic in order to fully clarify the candidates views on specific issues we ask that general information about a candidate's platform be laid out in their opening statement each candidate will have two minutes for their opening statements to use as they wish a time to share basic foundational views for their campaign as well as their specific engagement with with the district candidates will provide a response to questions for a maximum of two minutes and then the comments and rebuttals will be allowed for up to one minute each our timer angie waver boards angie is seated in the front row she has a 30 second board and a thank you board so that we can all see
009and try to stay on time finally in order for us to better evaluate the candidate's position we ask that the audience remain respectful during the debate outbursts displaying of signs comments and any other types of disruptive behavior during the debate will not be allowed and if you engage in those you will be asked to leave so if everybody's ready we're going to get started with the program so we're going to begin with the opening statements and as a reminder you each get two minutes to do your opening statement so mary lou without even being here drew first so we will play mary lou's recording for accommodating me and the scheduling conflict um i decided to run because um i just felt that the teachers in cusd needed a voice and the students need a voice
010it's just you know kind of uncertain times right now for them and i am a reformer chandler teacher i taught 21 years for the district in three different schools um elementary schools i taught at uh galveston bologna and national elementary um first second and fourth grade and i just um thought that i needed to just get in there and you know speak for the teachers and speak for the kids and and also for the parents too because i know there's some you know parents are kind of questioning what's going on in the classrooms and things like that so i just felt that this was a time and i'm not you know i just wanted to do it i apologize for the video um we do have this um on here and we'll get it set
011up for the next one so that you can physically see mary lou also on our cheaper website we have each of the candidates their written statements as well as their video statements on there for your future viewing and we'll make sure that we get this going for the next round so let's go ahead and is that all mary lou had to say that is all that okay i had to say yes all right charlotte you have two minutes hello my name is charlotte gala and i'm running for the chandler school board my husband and i have lived in chandler since 2005 and we have four children in eighth grade sixth grade second grade in kindergarten all in chandler schools when i left the corporate world in 2013 to focus on my expanding family i realized
012really quickly that i missed adult conversation so i jumped head first into volunteering at my kids schools i've been room mom pto secretary pto president and fundraising chairperson i really hit my groove with fundraising so that's where i spend most of my time and last year we wrapped up our fifth annual checkathon fundraiser raising a hundred thousand dollars in-house at a two percent budget with a school with less than 500 children so i know how to get a good team together and get a crowd excited now that my baby is in kindergarten i want to give back to our community i now have the time to serve and i want to do just that i'm a creative problem solver and i really believe in our school district we have the top three elementary schools in
013the state with knox weinberg and cta independence and we have those top three schools because our district isn't afraid of being innovative those are three of our magnet schools and i want to be a part of that direction of our school district to keep that innovation going i'm running because i love our children of our district i love our teachers of our district and uh i have a servant's heart so i'm charlotte gala my website is charlotte for chandler.com and i look forward to serving you thank you charlotte all right kurt you're next good evening and welcome uh first i'd like to uh express our appreciation for the chandler chamber the gilbert chamber and the queen chamber for giving us this opportunity to speak to you tonight my name is kurt rowlers i'm a parent
014in this district i'm involved with the district for many years 15 years on the budget committee as well i moved here in 1995 there was three kids in the district all who went on to college first one just graduated from college in may and has a job by the way so i'm appreciative of the district for the good education that they got here i'm also involved with the chandler chamber public policy committee been involved with them in a number of years particularly in the education and workforce development areas my education um i have a graduate degree in chemistry which led to a technical career and then an mba in finance which led to an executive career after that i spent 18 years in the high tech industry working executive positions uh traveling all over the
015world working with people from many many different cultures so i was a substitute teacher in cusd so i was able to get in the classrooms to see some things that were going on there and volunteer with icann helping kids with homework after school and i coached student athletes for quite some time five things i want to work on catching up and learning loss from recent school closures scores just came out and they are bad i think it's where we really need to work improving student retention we're losing students in the district improving staff retention and then one thing i really want to work on and talk about tonight is introducing a heavier emphasis on career and technical education and workforce development for kids to be able to find jobs after they graduate from the district
016thank you thank you kurt now laura it's your turn um i'd also like to thank the chamber for all the hard work of planning this event and i totally appreciate all the folks that have been supporting education in our community for many years it makes chandler what it is today i'm laura and i'm a parent and national award-winning educator who has dedicated my life to serving children while earning my degree at rutgers i volunteered at a school for children with autism and at an evening school teaching english to english language learners and then i substitu substitute taught in local schools after graduating with honors i worked with students who faced intellectual and learning challenges for 13 years and since 2005 i've been teaching psychology to high school students this year i teach in the morning
017and i spend my afternoons working on educator retention and engagement i have served on numerous local and statewide committees for education i've developed and sponsored mental health clubs for students i've presented at national education conferences i've developed retention programs for teachers and of course i currently serve as a member of the governing board of this amazing school district thank you for having us thank you and now on to patty good afternoon everyone my name is fatih serrano and i am your chandler unified school district governing board candidate from our district for our district a special thank you of course to our chambers of commerce and sponsors for highlighting the importance of this election and creating this space to better inform our community it's no coincidence that chandler's chamber of commerce is the third largest in
018the state just as cusd is the third largest school district in our state this is critical what we're doing here tonight is important and i thank you to each of you here in person and those watching with us online for showing up we show up because we care and have a vested interest in what happens within our schools here in cusd that is one of the reasons i'm here tonight as your candidate for cusd governing board this decision is absolutely personal to me i'm a proud public school cusd mom my son's been in the district for over nine years since kindergarten i'm a proud cusd alum product of our schools i graduated from the second graduating class of hamilton high school in 2001 when it was brand new i hear that's not the case now
019we have newer high schools and my family is absolutely rooted and invested in this district i have family that has taught here for over 24 years i have family that has played a role in our staff and all of the children in my local family have gone through cusd schools in fact i have the honor of participating in our cusd's i am chandler campaign as a cusd mom alum and community member i have distinct ties to our district as a mom i get it and am ready to bring representation to cusd that prioritizes the best whole child education that we can offer in all of our schools north and south of the 202 for all of our students educators staff and community at large thank you thank you all right we're now going to move
020on to the question as a reminder um for if you're the candidate with your question you get two minutes to answer then each candidate will have one minute to comment or rebut after that okay so charlotte you have the first question what can be done to improve student achievement and ensure everyone who graduates graduates is either work or higher education ready so our goal as a district when our children graduate is to have them ready for enrollment enlistment entrepreneurship or employment and so then what does that look like as a district it means we have to focus on getting them college ready which as a district i do feel we do a very good job at getting children college ready but we have to understand not all children are on the college path so one
021thing we must do is expand our technical education programs our chandler technical education that's something that i hear a lot about on our study sessions and our board meetings that needs to continue to expand so that we have people ready to go out into the workforce right away so that would be a focus for me on the board would be to extend that technical education we also have to make sure that our children are becoming critical thinkers the problem-based learning that we've implemented at several of our schools should be a model for our other schools we have this at our gifted schools we don't have it at our other schools i don't believe this is just a model for gifted children problem-based learning could get the kids at our title one schools so excited about
022and invested in their education and i understand that it will be very different than what it's looked like in the past but it's something we have to look at because if we can get kids excited about learning and excited to go to school then they become lifelong learners and a lifelong learner is somebody who is going to go out into the workforce and be a good employee so expanding that problem-based learning curriculum as well as expanding our chandler technical education curriculum would be how i would go about that thank you charlotte uh kurt do you have anything to add or say you have you response or original comments you have one minute all right this is something that i really would like to work on very strongly i think alluded to my original comments but
023there has to be a pathway for kids out of school when i was substitute teaching i was in some classes talked to some of the seniors they had a look of absolute fear in their eyes this is in may they're about to graduate and it's the end of the road and they do not know what they're going to do it's a very real thing there are four pathways one is the college track which the district does push quite a bit but another one is the trade schools another one's technical certificate programs and everyone's a military which has some of the best training for kids coming out of school available so thank you laura um i think the core of what we do in education is to prepare students for their future that future is absolutely
024including academics they need to learn to read they need to learn to solve problems related to mathematical and scientific and social issues they need to learn to communicate well both in writing and you know interacting one-on-one and with larger groups we also want to build character traits in our students financial literacy we want them to be able to use technology efficiently and understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens this is a tall order for schools and the research shows that the number one way to do this is to hire the best teachers they make the most the greatest impact on our students and we need to create programs and find ways to retain the excellent teachers that we already have through things like stay interviews and my time is up thank you thank you and
025pati hi there so i think this starts by what we're literally doing here tonight strategically coordinating with our chamber and other stakeholders to continue to offer and expand on opportunities a great example is our successful partnership and relationship in regards to ctes and what we do with evit we should grow those type of partnerships and that would look like promoting the option of career and technical education it would look like working with our local businesses to include ctes alongside them and internships and finally i believe it's critical in addressing what's to come by the year 2030 arizona will be a minority majority state we have to ask ourselves are we directly addressing that preparing for it and doing what's right to prepare our students knowing that's inevitable okay thank you very much now we're going
026to move on to the second last couple of years with the pandemic you know just gorge where they took a dive on that because the you know the in-person learning is so much more efficient and teachers are not trained to do online teaching as well and so just that the connection with the students in in the classroom is just so important and i just felt as far as the improvement how we can get them back up to speed is boy that's just you know have summer schools or or um after school programs but you know it just this was a difficult time for the students and the teachers and of course the parents as well because they have to you know watch the kids but to get them up to speed it's just you know
027i think it just is going to take time and a lot of i i really don't have an answer once you know if i'm elected on the board we can come up with a program and um have some ideas from you know all businesses and schools to you know maybe help but exacerbate the problem right now so sorry i forgot about mary lou okay now we're going to go on to question number two kurt what do you think needs to be done for school safety and what can a governing board member do to keep staff and students safe yeah this is probably the scariest thing for for parents and for teachers as well concerning some of the stuff that have happened i know that after one tragedy they had in the east coast the district
028did respond and put up fencing around every school in the district at a substantial expense okay and they felt they needed to do that one never was in the budget they used the reserve funding for that i have visited some of the schools and they're tightening up that as as well with the sally port concept but i really liked having the sros and schools these are police offices that are paid for by the district and the city to make sure that we have somebody there in case of a very difficult situation we have a new security chief here who's uh ex-pd if we've met him i think he's great and i think we'll probably continue to work on a lot of the safety things that that we need to work on the other thing that
029really concerns me now is the drug problem and i don't think we talk about this enough we've all seen the pictures of the candy colored fentanyl pills those are coming in the schools and we're going to start losing some kids if we don't jump on this right away so what i hate to say it but you probably need some devotion programs for kids that are caught and to really crack down anybody dealing drugs in school should be dealt with very very harshly that's the other safety concern that we have to worry about thank you laura do you have comments yes thank you um safety has many facets to it for our students one of them of course is physical safety of the place where they go every day and yes we have a new director
030of safety who has been looking and meeting with actually lots of community partners the police department and lots of folks to make sure that we are meeting all the needs for physical safety including for example things like making sure the fencing is secure the entryways locking of doors those kinds of things but there's other aspects to safety as well one includes school resource officers who can be a great asset to the community if you choose the right people to be those resource officers they need to have want to develop a relationship with our students in a positive way where where they can interact with a police officer and feel comfortable with that person and not intimidated by them and we also need to look at social emotional learning the number two way our students are
031dying in our junior highs and high schools is by suicide and we need to make sure we have a comprehensive plan that's evidence-based and community-based thank you party well as a parent here in our district it's we all want to keep our school community safe that's not a question here i think in regards to sros i think as a school board member it is my responsibility to make sure that we're paying attention to the financial aspect to this and what we already know um i didn't say this in my introduction but i come from an a background in evidence-based research i work in academic research at one of our public our largest public state universities and so i am always following the data and i'm sorry to share but the reality is that to date
032there exists no evidence that funding sros in our schools makes a difference in keeping our school campuses safe that evidence does not exist we need to follow what evidence does exist and we know that investing in school counselors and social workers really does make a difference if we look at the data aces have gone down we need to pay attention to that okay thank you did you want to play mariolino i know there are this is of a touchy subject you know actually because i know some parents you know are okay with sros and police on campus and some parents are not they just feel that you know that's with the police presence the kids aren't comfortable i think um that right now even when i was teaching they had a you know there's protocol
033in place for the lockdowns and what the kids are very i mean i don't want to say well trained but they know the protocol and they know what to do when you know there's uh emergency drill or whatever but as far as i think if the board decided to or chandler pd you know got more police presence as a rules or whatever on campus the one thing i want to make sure is that they the officers are very well trained for to know the students it's you know we've had some uh i'm sure episodes where they just don't have the connection or they you know um kids are kids and teenagers especially they're you know they have their own um personality and that i just think that the the sros and the police need to
034be trained to know be a little more cognizant of the teenagers and all the kids all right on to question number three oh i'm sorry see i'm always forgetting somebody all right charlotte your turn so there's multiple ways to address school safety at school sros being one of them training for our staff on what an at-risk child looks like as well also more parent education for the parents in our community our kids have been through a really rough two years parents need some information on what it looks like when their child is struggling we also need to address our student mental health issues it's not students with good mental health that are creating some school safety issues and we can look to set up a satellite center similar to the care center in the southern
035part of our district and partner with either not my kid or i can or something like that and again so that will happen resources that the parents can access for their children to help them with their mental health okay did you want to rebut the other question the school safety question or was that your okay because the next question is is under youth mental health all right so sorry about that okay laura this one starts with you youth mental health is an important issue for school administrations and state and local governments what can you do as a governing board member to support these types of programs students staffs and parent thank you for the question we know that over the last decade this has truly become a crisis it's always been an issue for students
036but it's an increasingly prevalent one unfortunately um and and a lot of attention is given to suicides and certainly there should be and that is a big piece of our mental health program but it also should address um an entire comprehensive plan with the community we need to have our government partners our non-profits and our specialists in the field out in our community partnering with us to this because the school district does not have the resources to meet all the needs of our students and as charlotte mentioned earlier part of that also is the parent education piece and so we want to make sure that we access parks and recreation and the city and the school district to reach as many parents as possible on how to know the signs of you know when your
037child needs counseling hopefully way before they ever get to the point where they're contemplating ending their lives another element of the social emotional learning is how to interact with each other how to develop relationships which can be a preventative intervention that we can do with students to help them make connections with others and have those social supports that are so vital another piece of the mental health process is that currently i've been working for the last six months or so with multiple folks trying to get this collective way of looking at mental health and it's an issue because to be honest there has been some resistance in the community to talking about it and to working on it and we and we are taking the lead in chandler to try to pull everyone together and
038we are bringing in a national expert hopefully this will happen in the next month or so where we have multiple people from different groups coming in and contributing to the plan thank you thank you pati well i think we need to start by listening it's that simple we need to do a better job listening to those directly impacted first and i just mentioned the acronym asus in my previous previous comment and i wanted to make sure i defined that those are adverse childhood events that have gone up over the past years cusd has lost students in the last year as many of you are aware to death by suicide clearly we have a problem but one of our problems is our lack of listening to those directly impacted like our students so my plan is
039to make space for those students listen to them not just at school board meetings but in a meaningful way to carry discussion and dialogue as they know their situation best we need to recognize our students who come here to advocate for their needs and not just the experts our students are their own experts in their own lives thank you are we ready for mary lou cusd has put in place quite a few programs right now so um and they have i think 92 counselors and 21 social workers throughout the district and i think they have put you know quite a bit of money into those programs and they have had other entities come in to to help with the youth mental health issues and i think it's a good start of what they're doing but
040we need to find out why and talk to the kids and have something you know where they have a safe zone to go in and you know maybe talk to a counselor and just feel like you know or have a group of students that can meet in a you know a club i know they do have a student club but i think they need to feel comfortable enough to be able to talk to someone and whether it be a counselor and a teacher and i know some parents don't feel that you know that is that they don't want their child to talk to teachers but i feel that teachers have that okay charlotte sorry i thought you'd read my mind earlier on the other question so so as i mentioned earlier youth mental health is
041important for school safety but it's also important to create better learners happy kids equal better learners so um as i mentioned um you know we we need some parent education offerings so that the parents can learn the risk signs but also learn how to listen to their children you know my my kids tell me they feel like a lot of the adults in their lives just aren't listening to them and sometimes we just need to step back a little and get a reminder from a third party on on how best to uh create that active listening environment i'd also advocate for a youth mental health commission so that we could again listen to our students and what their needs are and as i mentioned create a satellite center in the southern part of our district
042somewhat like the care center and have it as a place for children to go for the parents to take them there to access those mental health services thank you and kurt one thing i'd really like to understand about this is the causes i mean just treating symptoms is one thing but treating the causes will actually start to impact the problem kids are under so much more social pressure now than they ever had been before and part of this may be because a lot of political agendas are being driven through the education system that parents in particular are not real happy with so the second part of this is parents have to be involved you can't hide these things from parents and try to treat the kid yourself it has to be a joint effort between
043it now you know there was a presentation here a few weeks ago and they talked about that uh extensively here most of the programs are based with the county health department so we need to make it take advantage of the programs that are available instead of trying to reinvent the wheel here in chandler there is a lot of resources available with the county and let's use those thank you okay now we're going to start on the next question pathy you can start this one off for us this past arizona legislative session had a large number of education and school bills that became law which bill gave you the most concern and how will you handle the implementation as a board member well i hope we are all somewhat familiar with the aggregates expenditure limit it
044is not a new law but and we waited until the very last minute at the end of this legislative session to approve uh passing the cap on that limit basically there's a limit to the budget that is handed down from the state to our school districts we were put in a very very heated situation this last spring with the threat of them not lifting that cap what that would have resulted in is us not being able to possibly finish the school year in other school districts i do applaud cusd because we have reservation funds that would have met the need for us to finish the school year but we have to address all of our students throughout the state and be good neighbors i think it's extremely important to advocate for repealing this limit and
045that is something that i'm really looking forward being done in this new legislative session and i hope people join the advocacy that we're doing throughout our pro-education organizations it's critical that we repeal this limit so that we don't find ourselves in this situation again and that we can keep our reservations as they're needed our schools need to be properly funded and it is incumbent on our district boards to advocate for that funding in order to move our state students forward together again i'm a proud public school mom advocate and i have been involved for many years addressing these issues on the state level thank you do you want to okay here we go i think the one that concerns me the most is the funding and the ael the aggregate expenditure limit because that is
046going to happen year after year after year until the legislature or the constitution is amended because i just get a fear that this is going to occur like i said year after year and we need to do something because once you give a district x amount of dollars they're planning their budget around those x amount of dollars and then towards the end of the year it's like oops no you can't have that eight million dollars that we told you you could have so um something needs to be done and i think that is a very important um whether it be a bill i know uh representative pollock introduced a bill to extend that um ael for one year but i like i said i fear that this is going to occur every year thank you
047charlotte yes and i'll respond to the aggregate expenditure limit um so the aggregate expenditure limit is a taxpayer protection that was passed in the 1980s and um i don't disagree that it is very difficult for the districts to be given a budget and then not have access to that budget if it exceeds the aggregate expenditure limit but what i would advocate for would be fixing the limit so excluding the prop 301 money as it used to be but then wasn't upon renewal and then updating the calculation to be more reflective of our times that way the state legislature can then give a budget that falls within the aggregate expenditure limit because it is it is untenable for the district to be given a budget and then lucy with the football have it taken away but
048we cannot totally abandon that taxpayer protection either we need to fix the limit thank you kurt yeah the one i was most interested in was that there were finally some restrictions put in on crt type doctrine in the schools now yeah i know it's only taught in law schools and la but you know if he walks like a duck and talks like a duck it's probably a duck so judging kids based on their race and then separating the injured groups and calling one oppressed and one oppressor that needs to stop their kids and i can tell you being in schools they don't really care about this so there are a couple things in there holding kids responsible because of the race for things that happened decades ago or even centuries ago you know holding kids
049morally responsible for things that other people do in the race we shouldn't be judging kids this way let them be kids and i'm really glad the legislator finally got this right thank you all right and laura um so the question was which bills give us the most concern and honestly there's a lot to choose from i'm not going to lie and so i'm not going to go into the aggregate expenditure limit because we've talked a lot about that that is certainly a concern as well as other means by which they are trying to remove funding from our district schools um those are huge concerns for us um but i'll also talk a little bit about some of the other things that might be smaller issues but have a great impact on our ability to hold
050on to our excellent educators there have been multiple bills that have been proposed not just this year but the last few years where we lower the standards for teachers for them to become you know an educator of our children in the classroom and in addition we are questioning every word and every activity that our teachers do and if you don't think that impacts people and what they do every day you are being very naive people do not feel like they're supported by the community in the classroom because they feel like they're targets and they're afraid and i think we need to look at that again and explore how we can [Music] support our teachers not undermine them thank you okay we're going to move on to question number five sorry the way it's set up
051is you get to do oh yeah who started no you started it right sorry yep nope you started it so if you want to wrap something up in your closing remarks you'll you'll have a chance then but no you started off with you started off with the two minutes so yeah okay so question number five um we'll start with mary lou and the question is do you support programming that includes diversity equity and inclusion and social and emotional learning and cusd chandler go ahead and finish i'm sorry so once again the question is do you support programming that includes diversity equity and inclusion and social and emotional learning in cusd why or why not i do support the diversity and social emotional learning in chandler because it's such a very diverse community we have um
052the large hispanic community we have the high school kids that feel that they're not being heard whether it's the lgbtq community um and i feel that there's programs out there and i think we just need to work and um on um expanding the programs for the um the diverse population that chandler you know has i mean it is a very diverse community okay charlotte and that's a loaded question but exactly but i will say um i support open honest and direct communication uh at all levels so um you know for our k through six children i think that the best social emotional learning happens through free play i mean i i even had someone tell me once when i was putting my kindergartner on the bus the best social skills classes the bus you know
053so um so i definitely support social emotional learning in that aspect when it comes into your middle school and high school we have to foster a community where children can have that open honest and direct dialogue and have those difficult conversations so um that is the community that i would foster in our district thank you kurt yeah regarding sel i mean people need to understand it's now a state statute that we have to have this in our curriculum there's not a lot of detail about how it's supposed to manifest itself but i would say this i think the goal should be to be as a political as possible as we address these things this has to be about character and how people treat each other and being in the schools of the kids they really
054didn't care about race they cared about how people behave towards them that's i think what the real focus needs to be and maybe pull back some from some of the other things that we've done here um some people think we should look at everything through the lens of racism no we don't no we don't we should look at things to the way that people treat each other in their daily lives thank you thank you kurt laura i think the two core questions when we're looking at diversity equity and inclusion all three of those are that we have to look at the curriculum the materials that we are providing our students and do they reflect those who are using them is the curriculum helping to support our students so that they're prepared for the global society
055that they will be becoming a part of if they are not already experiencing people from all around the world they will be probably in their future and then secondly we need to look at do we have staff members that reflect the variety of backgrounds and experiences of our students and one more thing to add on to this is inclusion also includes students who have learning disabilities and have intellectual disabilities and we need to be continually striving to improve their instruction to give them opportunities to be included in the general curriculum as much as possible as well as providing all the needs that are there for our gifted students as well thank you and pati absolutely to all of the above in fact one of the main issues in my campaign is supporting the whole child
056education which encompasses beyond academics the social and emotional component along with mental health our job here in our district is to produce the best kids we can that means meeting them where they're at and addressing all of their needs in order for them to reach their full potential by recognizing and celebrating our differences and our real history we will better be set up to produce excellence in our students and i'm incredibly proud to be the only woman of color on this ticket and make history by being the first latina elected to see usd school board where 30 percent of our children are latino and over half of our students are now non-white identifying thank you thank you very much okay we're running pretty much on schedule so we're going to wrap up here we have
057our last question before we get to the closing so i think we should go to the closing um so that we remain on time okay all right so we're going to skip that one and we're going to go right to the closing so um we've heard a lot of really good responses tonight and we're going to give each of the candidates two minutes for their closing remarks we're going to go in reverse order from what we did with the opening remarks so papi you have two minutes for your closing remarks thank you lisa well this has just been wonderful everyone thank you again including the fellow candidates for participating and thank you all for informing yourselves on our important election for chandler unified school district governing board i hope through today's debate or forum that
058our chamber and community have grown to learn more about me pati serrano my vision my passion and commitment to serving our district in my best capacity every day i drop off my child to school i'm reminded of how much i love our district and rely on our district with my greatest gift my child as parents i understand we just want what's best for all of our children while recognizing those other stakeholders involved like our teachers our staff and community at large including our chamber again as a mom i get it and i'm ready to bring representation to cusd that prioritizes that whole child education so we can offer the best we can at all of our schools as your school board member i will listen starting with our students first we've already started on the
059right foot by holding a student round table with current students i'm excited to bring their issues to our board and address them i invite you to join us in any capacity and help elect someone from our district for our district you can learn more about me and find out how to get involved at serrano for chandler.com thank you patty laura you get your two minutes now okay thank you as a current school board member and lifelong educator i will continue to rely on evidence-based practices on listening to all stakeholders when making decisions i also wanted to mention a few other issues we didn't have time for in some of our questions just to make sure some of the priorities that i have are shared as well our population is aging and our enrollment is declining
060and we must do everything we can to try to bring students to our schools through high motivation methods with project-based learning inquiry-based lessons career and technical education allowing teachers to be innovative so that we can increase our graduation rates improve not only our academic but as well all the all the different needs that our students have to be successful in college career and life um all our efforts to increase enrollment once those are exhausted then we need to look at our community to see how we can repurpose our land and buildings in a way where the neighborhoods and the districts benefit there is a retention crisis for our staff we still have a few positions that are open in this district that we can't fill and most other districts are doing even worse than we
061are we need to create a plan where we gather information from our employees in a proactive way where we have a meet and confer process for non-budgetary issues so that staff feel like people are listening and that they can address the problems before they become too large and insurmountable we need to give teachers autonomy and a voice we need to make their jobs sustainable by providing the resources that they need we need to foster connections with the community to help our the mental health of our students and we need to maximize our funds towards salaries thank you thank you kurt well again i want to thank you all for being here um last couple comments i wanted to make is that i go to a lot of school board meetings and one thing i've noticed
062over the last several years there is nobody on the board that really represents the rights of parents and the rights and the concerns of parents and that's why i think we need to get a couple parents on the school board arizona state law is very very clear it says that the liberty of parents to direct the upbringing education health care and mental health of their children is a fundamental right that includes the right to direct the education of the minor child the parents have that right the right to access all records regarding the minor child the right to direct the upbringing of the minor child and the right to direct the moral and religious training of the mild child that is not the responsibility of the school district the responsibility of the school district is
063to teach them to read and write and do math and the second thing i wanted to bring up is that we're facing i believe a very serious problem in our learning loss here i want to make sure that all schools all schools have are below are above fifty percent proficiency in leading and math we have schools that are down to twenty and thirty percent range and it got much worse over the school shutdown the third thing is really starting to push job skills training and workforce development is very important to the city is very important to the chandler chamber i want kids to have a pathway out of high school that's very well defined and i think we do a much better job with that thank you thank you very much all right charlotte i
064want to close with some of the very life experiences that i bring to the board and then also with um what i want to accomplish as a board member so the life experiences i bring are varied and it begins with having a reading specialist for a mother so my mother was a teacher in public schools then at a literacy center for illiterate mothers a tutor for children with dyslexia and finally a teacher trainer in the wilson reading system watching her dedication to education with a focus on the most important cornerstone of reading shaped my appreciation for educators i ended up following in my father's footsteps not my mother's and worked in our family tpa business i worked in implementation throughout high school and college and then after i was shipped out to get some sales
065experience at other insurance companies returned to be the regional sales manager for the western region until we sold the company to wage works in 2013. working at a company and seeing it grow from two employees to 250 and then be an integral part of its sale teaches you the importance of creative problem solving and critical thinking both of which are crucial for a board member i am a creative problem solver as well as an excellent communicator i value open honest and direct discussion and i can see all sides of an issue and enter every dialogue with an open heart and an open mind i'm excited to address all issues brought forward to the board including learning loss student mental health expanding cte offerings and finding creative solutions for our schools with declining enrollment i also
066really want to look at our business model right now the only path for significant wage enhancement in our district is to leave teaching and go into administration intel has two career paths a management and a technical i don't see why we can't look at things and see how we keep our master teachers in and around the classroom and compensate them accordingly instead of having them leave for administration to make a higher salary i'm charlotte gala my website is charlotteforchandler.com and i'm open always for you to call me with any questions thank you thank you thank you charlotte and we wrap up with mary lou again i'm mary lou estes and i'm running for the chandler school board i just feel that it's important to bring the governing board and the business community together to figure
067out what we can do for our students um i have my family moved to arizona uh 60 years ago i've lived in chamber for 40 years i was on cusd teacher for 21 years i think i know the community the chandler community and like i say i want to be a voice for the students and let them know that there's somebody on the board that really does care about them and i want to be a voice for the teachers and the parents because i think you know without you know we have to have those teachers and we have to have highly qualified teachers and if we don't listen to them they are leaving um in unprecedented numbers we need to listen to all everybody thank you this concludes our debate for this evening we've heard
068some really great responses from our candidates and i hope this program gives the voters a clearer picture of which candidates that they would like to support again i would like to thank the chandler unified school district for their support in the program venue space ladies and gentlemen thank you very much for your interest in participating in tonight's governing board debate and thanks again to the candidates for taking time out of your busy election season to come and have this conversation with us this evening a reminder early voting begins on october 12th and the general election is november 8th stay healthy stay safe and have a great evening [Applause] you